• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.93-112
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• 2015

Depending on the change in consumer's consumption pattern, existing retail shop has evolved in hypermarket or convenience store offering grocery and daily products mostly. Therefore, it is important to maintain the inventory levels and proper product configuration for effectively utilize the limited space in the retail store and increasing sales. Accordingly, this study proposed proper product configuration and inventory level strategy based on RFM(Recency, Frequency, Monetary) model and SOM(self-organizing map) for manage the retail shop effectively. RFM model is analytic model to analyze customer behaviors based on the past customer's buying activities. And it can differentiates important customers from large data by three variables. R represents recency, which refers to the last purchase of commodities. The latest consuming customer has bigger R. F represents frequency, which refers to the number of transactions in a particular period and M represents monetary, which refers to consumption money amount in a particular period. Thus, RFM method has been known to be a very effective model for customer segmentation. In this study, using a normalized value of the RFM variables, SOM cluster analysis was performed. SOM is regarded as one of the most distinguished artificial neural network models in the unsupervised learning tool space. It is a popular tool for clustering and visualization of high dimensional data in such a way that similar items are grouped spatially close to one another. In particular, it has been successfully applied in various technical fields for finding patterns. In our research, the procedure tries to find sales patterns by analyzing product sales records with Recency, Frequency and Monetary values. And to suggest a business strategy, we conduct the decision tree based on SOM results. To validate the proposed procedure in this study, we adopted the M-mart data collected between 2014.01.01~2014.12.31. Each product get the value of R, F, M, and they are clustered by 9 using SOM. And we also performed three tests using the weekday data, weekend data, whole data in order to analyze the sales pattern change. In order to propose the strategy of each cluster, we examine the criteria of product clustering. The clusters through the SOM can be explained by the characteristics of these clusters of decision trees. As a result, we can suggest the inventory management strategy of each 9 clusters through the suggested procedures of the study. The highest of all three value(R, F, M) cluster's products need to have high level of the inventory as well as to be disposed in a place where it can be increasing customer's path. In contrast, the lowest of all three value(R, F, M) cluster's products need to have low level of inventory as well as to be disposed in a place where visibility is low. The highest R value cluster's products is usually new releases products, and need to be placed on the front of the store. And, manager should decrease inventory levels gradually in the highest F value cluster's products purchased in the past. Because, we assume that cluster has lower R value and the M value than the average value of good. And it can be deduced that product are sold poorly in recent days and total sales also will be lower than the frequency. The procedure presented in this study is expected to contribute to raising the profitability of the retail store. The paper is organized as follows. The second chapter briefly reviews the literature related to this study. The third chapter suggests procedures for research proposals, and the fourth chapter applied suggested procedure using the actual product sales data. Finally, the fifth chapter described the conclusion of the study and further research.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.97-125
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• 2012

Companies recently introduce art collaborated products incorporating culture into a product. Art collaborated products include incorporating famous movies and/or design of an artist into a newly launched product. The introduction of art collaborated products are gradually increasing. However, research for this trend is relatively scarce. Although research concerning design has discussed a number of different factors as playing a role in influencing responses to design including culture, fashion, innate preferences, etc.), only limited attention has been paid to the processes by which consumers generate responses to product designs. People with different characteristics may respond differently. When people encounter these art products, they may become curious, may think that these products are unique, novel and innovative. People tend to show different levels of curiosity when they encounter new and novel objects, which they have rarely seen or experienced. Curiosity is defined as a desire for acquiring new knowledge and new sensory experience. Previous studies demonstrated that curiosity motivates individuals to engage in exploratory behaviors. People also show different levels of need for uniqueness, which is defined as being different from others or becoming distinctive among a larger group. Individual's need for uniqueness results from signals conveyed by the material objects that individuals choose to display. Recently, researcher have developed the need for uniqueness with three distinct constructs. These three concepts include creative choice, unpopular choice, and avoidance of similarity. Creative choice is a trait tendency of an individual by expressing or differentiating himself from others through consumptions of unique products. Unpopular choice is related to an individual's tendency to consume products, which deviates from group norms. Avoidance of similarity is linked to the avoidance of consumption behavior of products that are not famous. Past research implies that people with different levels of need for uniqueness show different motivational processes. Previous research also demonstrates that different customer emotions may be derived when consumers are exposed to these art collaborated products. Research tradition has been investigated three different emotional responses such as pleasure, arousal, and dominance. Pleasure is defined as the degree to which a person feels good, joyful, happy, or satisfied in a situation. Arousal is defined as the extent to which a person feels stimulated, active, or excited. Dominance is defined as the extent that a person feels powerful vis-a-vis the environment that surrounds him/her. Previous research show that complex, speedy, and surprising stimuli may excite consumers and thus make them more pleased and engaged in their approach behavior. However, the current study identified these emotional responses as positive emotion, negative emotion, and arousal. These derived emotions may lead consumers to approach and/or avoidance behaviors. In addition, males and females tend to respond differently when they are exposed to art collaboration products. Building on this research tradition, the current study aims to investigate the inter-relationships between individual traits such as curiosity and need for uniqueness and individual's emotional responses including positive and negative emotion and arousal when people encounter various art collaborated products. Emotional responses are proposed to influence purchase intention. Additionally, previous studies show that male and females respond differently to similar stimuli. Accordingly, gender difference are proposed to moderate the links between individual traits and emotional responses. These research aims of the current study may contribute to extending our knowledge in terms of (1) which individual characteristics are related to different emotions, and (2) how these different emotional responses inter-connected to future purchase intention of arts collaborated products. In addition, (3) the different responses to these arts collaborated products by males and females will guide managers how to concoct different strategies to these segments. The questionnaire for the present study was adopted from the previous literature and validated with a pilot test. The survey was conducted in Daegu, a third largest city in South Korea, for three weeks during June and July 2011. Most respondents were in their twenties and thirties. 350 questionnaires were distributed and among them 300 were proved to be valid (valid response rate of 85.7%). Survey questionnaires from valid 300 respondents are used to test hypotheses proposed. The structural equation model (SEM) was used to validate the research model. The measurement and structural model was tested using LISREL 8.7. The measurement model test demonstrated that consistency, convergent validity, and discriminat validity of the measurement items were acceptable. The results from the structural model demonstrate that curiosity has a positive impact on positive emotion, but not on negative emotion and arousal. Need for uniqueness has three different sub-concepts such as creative choice, unpopular choice, and avoidance of similarity. The results show that creative choice has a positive effect on arousal and positive emotion, but has a negative impact on negative emotion. Unpopular choice has a positive effect on arousal, but on neither positive nor negative emotions. Avoidance of similarity has no impact on neither emotions nor arousal. The results also demonstrated that gender has a moderating influence. Males show more negative emotion to creative and unpopular choices. Implications and future research directions are discussed in conclusion.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• v.46 no.7
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• pp.876-885
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• 2017

This study aimed to identify the characteristics of Home Meal Replacement (HMR) product purchases and the need for HMR product development for Hong Kong consumers in order to suggest market segmentation strategies according to consumers' dietary lifestyle. For this, an online survey was conducted on a panel of 521 Hong Kong consumers with HMR purchase experience registered at a specialized organization. Data analysis was performed using SPSS (ver. 23.0). HMR purchase characteristics of Hong Kong consumers according to dietary lifestyle showed significant differences in all items, including 'number of purchases', 'purchase location', 'cost of single purchase', and 'reason for purchase'. According to dietary lifestyle, participants were divided into three clusters: 'High interest', 'normal interest', and 'low interest'. In the case of 'high interest in dietary life group', 'low-sodium food' was the most common, followed by 'heating food', 'low sugar food', and 'low calorie food'. In the case of 'moderate interest in dietary life group', 'low-sodium food' was the most common, followed by 'low sugar food', 'low calorie food', and 'nutritious meal'. In the case of 'low interest in dietary life group', 'low sugar food' was the most common, followed by 'low-sodium food', 'various new menu', and 'easy-to-carry dehydrated food'. For the 'high interest' group, the highest proportion of consumers were male in between the ages of 20 to 29, married, and worked in an office job. The 'high interest' consumers also showed a tendency to pay '15,000 to 20,000 KRW' per single purchase. The 'normal interest' group consisted of an even proportion of male and female consumers, with the most common age range being from 30 to 39 years, and most were married. These consumers preferred to spend 'less than 10,000 KRW' or '10,000 KRW to 15,000 KRW' per single purchase, which is in the lower price range for HMR purchases. The 'low interest in dietary life group' had more females gender-wise, were unmarried, and worked in an office job, For a single purchase, the 'low interest' group chose to pay less than 10,000 KRW, which is relatively lower than the other two clusters. The results of this study can be used as baseline data for building marketing strategies for HMR product development. It can also provide basic data and directions for new HMR export products that reflect consumer needs in order to create a market segmentation strategy for industrial applications.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.1-24
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• 2010

I. Introduction The industry of domestic discount store was reorganized with 2 bigs and 1 middle, and then Home Plus took over Home Ever in 2008. In present, Oct, 2008, E-Mart has 118 outlets, Home Plus 112 outlets, and Lotte Mart 60 stores. With total number of 403 outlets, they are getting closer to a saturation point. We know that the industry of discount store has been getting through the mature stage in retail life cycle. There are many efforts to maintain existing customers rather than to get new customers. These competitions in this industry lead firms to acknowledge 'store loyalty' to be the first strategic tool for their sustainable competitiveness. In other words, the strategic goal of discount store is to boost up the repurchase rate of customers throughout increasing store loyalty. If owners of retail shops can figure out main factors for store loyalty, they can easily make more efficient and effective retail strategies which bring about more sales and profits. In this practical sense, there are many papers which are focusing on the antecedents of store loyalty. Many researchers have been inspecting causal relationships between antecedents and store loyalty; store characteristics, store image, atmosphere in store, sales promotion in store, service quality, customer characteristics, crowding, switching cost, trust, satisfaction, commitment, etc., In recent times, many academic researchers and practitioners have been interested in 'dual path model for service loyalty'. There are two paths in store loyalty. First path has an emphasis on symbolic and emotional dimension of service brand, and second path focuses on quality of product and service. We will call the former an extrinsic path and call the latter an intrinsic path. This means that consumers' cognitive path for store loyalty is not single but dual. Existing studies for dual path model are as follows; First, in extrinsic path, some papers in domestic settings show that there is 'store personality-identification-loyalty' path. Second, service quality has an effect on loyalty, which is a behavioral variable, in the mediation of customer satisfaction. But, it's very difficult to find out an empirical paper applied to domestic discount store based on this mediating model. The domestic research for store loyalty concentrates on not only intrinsic path but also extrinsic path. Relatively, an attention for intrinsic path is scarce. And then, we acknowledge that there should be a need for integrating extrinsic and intrinsic path. Also, in terms of retail industry, this study is meaningful because retailers want to achieve their competitiveness by using store loyalty. And so, the purpose of this paper is to integrate and complement two existing paths into one specific model, dual path model. This model includes both intrinsic and extrinsic path for store loyalty. With this research, we would expect to understand the full process of forming customers' store loyalty which had not been clearly explained. In other words, we propose the dual path model for discount store loyalty which has been originated from store personality and service quality. This model is composed of extrinsic path, discount store personality$\rightarrow$store identification$\rightarrow$store loyalty, and intrinsic path, service quality of discount store$\rightarrow$customer satisfaction$\rightarrow$store loyalty. II. Research Model Dual path model integrates intrinsic path and extrinsic path into one specific model. Intrinsic path put an emphasis on quality characteristics and extrinsic path focuses on brand characteristics. Intrinsic path is based on information processing perspective, and extrinsic path emphasizes symbolic and emotional dimension of brand. This model is composed of extrinsic path, discount store personality$\rightarrow$store identification$\rightarrow$store loyalty, and intrinsic path, service quality of discount store$\rightarrow$customer satisfaction$\rightarrow$store loyalty. Hypotheses are as follows; Hypothesis 1: Service quality perceived by customers in discount store has an positive effect on customer satisfaction Hypothesis 2: Store personality perceived by customers in discount store has an positive effect on store identification Hypothesis 3: Customer satisfaction in discount store has an positive effect on store loyalty. Hypothesis 4: Store identification has an positive effect on store loyalty. III. Results and Implications We examined consumers who patronize discount stores for samples of this study. With the structural equation model(SEM) analysis, we empirically tested the validity and fitness of the dual path model for store loyalty in discount stores. As results, the fitness indices of this model were well fitted to data obtained. In an intrinsic path, service quality(SQ) is positively related to customer satisfaction(CS), customer satisfaction(CS) has very significantly positive effect on store loyalty(SL). Also, in an extrinsic path, the store personality(SP) is positively related to store identification(SI), it shows significant effect on store loyalty. Table 1 shows the results as follows; There are some theoretical and practical implications. First, Many studies on discount store loyalty have been executed from various perspectives. But there has been no integrative view on this issue. And so, this research was theoretically designed to integrate various and controversial arguments into one systematic model. We empirically tested dual path model forming store loyalty, and brought up a systematic and integrative framework for future studies. We want to expect creative and aggressive research activities. Second, a few established papers are focused on the relationship between antecedents and store loyalty; store characteristics, atmosphere, sales promotion in store, service quality, trust, commitment, etc., There has been some limits in understanding thoroughly the formation process of store loyalty with a singular path, intrinsic or extrinsic. Beyond these limits in single path, we could propose the new path for store loyalty. This is meaningful. Third, discount store firms make and execute marketing strategies for increasing store loyalty. This research provides real practitioners with reference framework needed for actual strategy formation. Because this paper shows integrated and systematic path for store loyalty. A special feature of this study is to represent 6 sub dimensions of service quality in intrinsic path and 4 sub dimensions of store personality in extrinsic path. Marketers can make more analytic marketing planning with concrete sub dimensions of service quality and store personality. When marketers of discount stores make strategic planning like MPR, Ads, campaign, sales promotion, they can use many items which are more competitive than competitors.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.1-23
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• 2013

To discover significant social issues such as unemployment, economy crisis, social welfare etc. that are urgent issues to be solved in a modern society, in the existing approach, researchers usually collect opinions from professional experts and scholars through either online or offline surveys. However, such a method does not seem to be effective from time to time. As usual, due to the problem of expense, a large number of survey replies are seldom gathered. In some cases, it is also hard to find out professional persons dealing with specific social issues. Thus, the sample set is often small and may have some bias. Furthermore, regarding a social issue, several experts may make totally different conclusions because each expert has his subjective point of view and different background. In this case, it is considerably hard to figure out what current social issues are and which social issues are really important. To surmount the shortcomings of the current approach, in this paper, we develop a prototype system that semi-automatically detects social issue keywords representing social issues and problems from about 1.3 million news articles issued by about 10 major domestic presses in Korea from June 2009 until July 2012. Our proposed system consists of (1) collecting and extracting texts from the collected news articles, (2) identifying only news articles related to social issues, (3) analyzing the lexical items of Korean sentences, (4) finding a set of topics regarding social keywords over time based on probabilistic topic modeling, (5) matching relevant paragraphs to a given topic, and (6) visualizing social keywords for easy understanding. In particular, we propose a novel matching algorithm relying on generative models. The goal of our proposed matching algorithm is to best match paragraphs to each topic. Technically, using a topic model such as Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), we can obtain a set of topics, each of which has relevant terms and their probability values. In our problem, given a set of text documents (e.g., news articles), LDA shows a set of topic clusters, and then each topic cluster is labeled by human annotators, where each topic label stands for a social keyword. For example, suppose there is a topic (e.g., Topic1 = {(unemployment, 0.4), (layoff, 0.3), (business, 0.3)}) and then a human annotator labels "Unemployment Problem" on Topic1. In this example, it is non-trivial to understand what happened to the unemployment problem in our society. In other words, taking a look at only social keywords, we have no idea of the detailed events occurring in our society. To tackle this matter, we develop the matching algorithm that computes the probability value of a paragraph given a topic, relying on (i) topic terms and (ii) their probability values. For instance, given a set of text documents, we segment each text document to paragraphs. In the meantime, using LDA, we can extract a set of topics from the text documents. Based on our matching process, each paragraph is assigned to a topic, indicating that the paragraph best matches the topic. Finally, each topic has several best matched paragraphs. Furthermore, assuming there are a topic (e.g., Unemployment Problem) and the best matched paragraph (e.g., Up to 300 workers lost their jobs in XXX company at Seoul). In this case, we can grasp the detailed information of the social keyword such as "300 workers", "unemployment", "XXX company", and "Seoul". In addition, our system visualizes social keywords over time. Therefore, through our matching process and keyword visualization, most researchers will be able to detect social issues easily and quickly. Through this prototype system, we have detected various social issues appearing in our society and also showed effectiveness of our proposed methods according to our experimental results. Note that you can also use our proof-of-concept system in http://dslab.snu.ac.kr/demo.html.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.352-367
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• 2002

In order to assess the quality of dietary intake among the elderly, a survey was conducted during Jucy-August, 1999, of 230 subjects who were 65 years or older and who were living in Jeonju City. Results of the analysis of the data are as follows : Regarding Dietery Variety Score (DVS), the average number of food items consumed per person was significantly higher for males (19.6) than for females (17.7). The intake of plant food was higher than animal food for both sexes the proportion of plant versus animal foods consumed by fresh weight was 85 : 15 for males and 89 : 11 for females. Diet Diversity Score (DDS) is determined by how many from five food groups (cereal, meat, dairy, vegetable and fruit) consumed per day while Korean Diet Diversity Score (KDDS) is determined by how many from five different food groups (cereal, meat, vegetable, dairy and oil) consumed per day. The subjects'average DDS and KDDS were 4.0 and 3.5 for males, and 3.7 and 3.2 for females, respectively. Overall, the distribution of DDS was lower than that of KDDS. The average Meal Balance Score (MBS : Apply the KDDS at breakfast, lunch and dinner) was 9.1 for malts and 8.1 for females. Average daily caloric intake for males and females was 1,740 kcal and 1,433 kcal, which was 84.0% and 80.9% of the RDA, respectively. Average daily protein intake for males and females, at 67 g and 49 g (100.7% and 88.3% of the RDA), respectively, was satisfactory. However, intakes of calcium and vitamin A were below 75% of the RDA (calcium : 62.7% for males and 55.3% for females ; vitamin A : 60.7% for males and 53.9% far females). The average proportional contribution of protein/fat/carbohydrate (PFC) to total calorie intake was 15.8 : 15.7 : 68.5 for males and 13.8 : 13.2 : 73.0 for females. Distribution of energy for each meal (breakfast : lunch : afternoon snack : dinner : night snack) was 29.2 : 32.4 : 5.0 : 31.2 : 2.2 among males and 30.5 : 33.5 : 4.5 : 28.6 : 2.91 among females. The Index of Nutritional Quality (INQ) was above 1 for protein, phosphorus, iron, vitamin B$_1$, niacin, and vitamin C. However, the INQ of calcium and vitamin A were below 1 among both males and females, and the INQ of vitamin B$_2$was below l among females. The Nutrient Adequacy Ratio (NAR = nutrient intake %RDA) was below 1 for all nutrients, and the NAR of vitamin A were the lowest among 9 nutrients (protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, vitamin A, vitamin B$_1$, vitamin B$_2$, niacin, vitamin C) for both males and females, with values of 0.52 and 0.42, respectively. The second and third lowest NAR values were for calcium(males: 0.68: females: 0.54) and vitamin B$_2$(males: 0.77: females: 0.67). Values of Mean Adequacy Ratio (MAR = sum of 9 NARs/9) for males (0.82) were higher than for females (0.73). These results indicate that the intakes of calcium and vitamin A were severely inadequate. The results of a stepwise multiple regression analysis, where the DVS or MAR were the dependent variables and the DDS, KDDS, and MBS were independent variables, indicated that DDS is a more useful variable than KDDS in determining the quality of meals of the elderly.