• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.199-207
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• 2010

For us, there is virtually no distinction between being a responsible citizen and a successful business... they are one and the same for Wal-Mart today." ~ Lee Scott, al-Mart CEO after the 2005 Katrina disaster; cited in Green to Gold (Esty and Winston 2006). Lee Scott's statement signaled a new era in sustainability as manufacturers and retailers around the globe watched the world's largest mass merchandiser confirm its intentions with respect to sustainability. For decades, the environmental movement has grown, slowly bleeding over into the corporate world. Companies have been born, products have been created, academic journals have been launched, and government initiatives have been undertaken - all in the pursuit of sustainability (Peattie and Crane 2005). While progress has been admittedly slower than some may desire, the emergence and entrance of environmentally concerned mass merchandisers has done much to help with sustainable efforts. To better understand this movement, we incorporate the perspectives of both executives and consumers involved in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry. This research relies on three underlying themes: (1) Conceptual and anecdotal evidence suggests that companies undertake sustainability initiatives for a plethora of reasons, (2) The number of sustainability initiatives continues to increase in the consumer packaged goods industries, and (3) That it is, therefore, necessary to explore the role that sustainability plays in the minds of consumers. In light of these themes, surveys were administered to and completed by 143 college students and 101 business executives to assess a number of variables in regards to sustainability including willingness-to-pay, behavioral intentions, attitudes, willingness-to-pay, and preferences. Survey results indicate that the top three reasons why executives believe sustainability to be important include (1) the opportunity for profitability, (2) the fulfillment of an obligation to the environment, and (3) a responsibility to customers and shareholders. College students identified the top three reasons as (1) a responsibility to the environment, (2) an indebtedness to future generations, and (3) an effective management of resources. While the rationale for supporting sustainability efforts differed between college students and executives, the executives and consumers reported similar responses for the majority of the remaining sustainability issues. Furthermore, when we asked consumers to assess the importance of six key issues (healthcare, economy, education, crime, government spending, and environment) previously identified as important to consumers by Gallup Poll, protecting the environment only ranked fourth out of the six (Carlson 2005). While all six of these issues were identified as important, the top three that emerged as most important were (1) improvements in education, (2) the economy, and (3) health care. As the pursuit and incorporation of sustainability continues to evolve, so too will the expected outcomes. New definitions of performance that reflect the social/business benefits as well as the lengthened implementation period are relevant and warranted (Ehrenfeld 2005; Hitchcock and Willard 2006). We identified three primary categories of outcomes based on a literature review of both anecdotal and conceptual expectations of sustainability: (1) improvements in constituent satisfaction, (2) differentiation opportunities, and (3) financial rewards. Within each of these categories, several specific outcomes were identified resulting in eleven different outcomes arising from sustainability initiatives. Our survey results indicate that the top five most likely outcomes for companies that pursue sustainability are: (1) green consumers will be more satisfied, (2) company image will be better, (3) corporate responsibility will be enhanced, (4) energy costs will be reduced, and (5) products will be more innovative. Additionally, to better understand the interesting intersection between the environmental "identity" of a consumer and the willingness to manifest that identity with marketplace purchases, we extended prior research developed by Experian Research (2008). Accordingly, respondents were categorized as one of four types of green consumers (Behavioral Greens, Think Greens, Potential Greens, or True Browns) to garner a better understanding of the green consumer in addition to assisting with a more effective interpretation of results. We assessed these consumers' willingness to engage in eco-friendly behavior by evaluating three options: (1) shopping at retailers that support environmental initiatives, (2) paying more for products that protect the environment, and (3) paying higher taxes so the government can support environmental initiatives. Think Greens expressed the greatest willingness to change, followed by Behavioral Greens, Potential Greens, and True Browns. These differences were all significant at p<.01. Further Conclusions and Implications We have undertaken a descriptive study which seeks to enhance our understanding of the strategic domain of sustainability. Specifically, this research fills a gap in the literature by comparing and contrasting the sustainability views of business executives and consumers with specific regard to preferences, intentions, willingness-to-pay, behavior, and attitudes. For practitioners, much can be gained from a strategic standpoint. In addition to the many results already reported, respondents also reported than willing to pay more for products that protect the environment. Other specific results indicate that female respondents consistently communicate a stronger willingness than males to pay more for these products and to shop at eco-friendly retailers. Knowing this additional information, practitioners can now have a more specific market in which to target and communicate their sustainability efforts. While this research is only an initial step towards understanding similarities and differences among practitioners and consumers regarding sustainability, it presents original findings that contribute to both practice and research. Future research should be directed toward examining other variables affecting this relationship, as well as other specific industries.

• Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.22-33
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• 2003

Purpose : The purpose of this study was to evaluate the present status of patients' satisfaction and the reasons for any satisfaction or dissatisfaction in cancer pain management Methods : A cross-sectional survey was used to obtain the feedback about pain management. The results of the survey were collected from 59 in- or out-patient who had cancer treatment at two of the teaching hospitals in Seoul from July, 2002 to November, 2002. The data was obtained by a structured questionnaire based on the American Cancer Society Patient Outcome Questionnaire(APS-POQ) and other previous research. The clinical information for all patients were compiled by reviewing their medical records. Resuts : 1) The subjects' mean score of the worst pain was 6.77, the average pain score was 3.80, and the pain score after management was 2.93 for the past 24 hours. The mean score of total pain interference was $25.03{\pm}12.82$. Many of the subjects had false beliefs about pain such as 'the experience of pain is a sign that the illness has gotten worse', 'pain medicine should be 'saved' in case the pain gets worse' and 'people get addicted to pain medicine easily'. 2) 66.1% of the subjects were properly medicated with analgesics. 33.9% of the subjects reported use of various methods in controlling pain other than the prescribed medication. Only 33.9% of the subjects had a chance to be educated about pain management by doctors or nurses. 3) The mean score of patients' satisfaction with pain management was $4.19{\pm}1.14$. 72.9% of the subjects answered 'satisfied' with pain management. The reasons for dissatisfaction were 'the pain was not relieved even after the pain management', 'I was not quickly and promptly treated when I complained of pain', 'doctors and nurses didn't pay much attention to my complaints of pain.', and 'there was no appropriate information given on the methods of administration, effect duration and side effects of pain medicine.' The reasons for satisfaction were: 'the pain was relieved after the pain management.', 'doctors and nurses quickly and promptly controlled my pain.', 'doctors and nurses paid enough attention to my complaints of pain.' and 'trust in my physician'. 4) In pain severity or pain interference, no significant difference was found between the satisfied group and dissatisfied group. On the belief 'good patients avoid talking about pain', a significant difference was found between the satisfied group and dissatisfied group. Conclusions : The patients' satisfaction with cancer pain management has increased over the years but still about 30% of patients reported to be 'not satisfied' for various reasons. The results of this study suggest that patients' education should be done to improve satisfaction in the pain management program.

• Journal of The Korea Institute of Healthcare Architecture
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.51-59
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• 2013

Purpose: At the moment, a lot of poor older people live in permanent rental housing in Korea. But many rental apartments are not suitable for elderly living because most of them have many problems related to the lack of accessibility and adaptability for older people with physical and mental disabilities. So it is necessary to upgrade the old permanent rental housing for convenience of elderly living. The purpose of this paper is to construct basic data for remodeling of worn out and small rental housing block in order to realize the concept of "Aging in Place". Methods: Questionnaires and interviews about elderly living have been conducted on 104 elderly who live in Suwon Wooman permanent rental apartment block which was constructed 21 years ago. From the collected data, dining pattern, inconvenient area, small area, satisfaction level on unit area and demand for unit expansion type have been analysed in order to find out the direction for remodeling of permanent rental apartment unit. Results: The problems of existing permanent rental apartment can be summarized into improper laundry space, small dining area, inconvenient bath and so on. According to the family size, the elderly resident has the different preference about the expansion type of his resident unit. Big families usually want to enlarge their living unit though they pay for additional monthly rental fee. Implications: Lifetime home concept adopting Universal Design has to be applied to the whole residential block especially to the social rental housing. And this concept had better be expanded to Lifetime neighbor design.

• Journal of Korean society of Dental Hygiene
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.115-129
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• 2002

The purpose of this study was to examine the actual dental hygiene status of workers in cement industry in an effort to serve as a basis for enhancing their dental hygiene. The subjects in this study were 420 laborers from the cities of Curi, Donghae and Samcheok who handled cement. As a result of conducting a survey, the following findings were given : l. The workers investigated found their working environment satisfactory, getting a mean score of 323. They also expressed a high job satisfaction with a mean score of 333. 2. They didn't have a big interest in oral health. By age group, those who were aged between 36 and 40, or who cared less about health management, showed a higher interest in oral health. Besides, the laborers who kept smoking for a longer period, or who drunk more, expressed greater interest. 3. The toothbrushing method was considered most important for periodontal health, by 45.0% of the workers, and the next most crucial one was regular dental examination, followed by refraining from smoking and staying away from sweet food in the order named. 4. Concerning daily mean toothbrushing frequency, 455% brushed their teeth three times a day on the average. More than half them didn't pay enough attention to toothbrushing. 5. Regarding scaling, the large number of the workers, 42.4%, had no experience to get their teeth scaled, 37.6%, the greatest percentage, didn't have their teeth scaled because it seemed to make their teeth painful or cold. 6. As fororal health education experience, 67.6%, the great number of them, had no experience to receive dental health education. The above-mentioned findings suggest that the cement-related workers generally neglected dental health management. They should be encouraged to correct their wrong oral health knowledge or habit to make their oral cavity more healthy. To make it happen, it's required to provide oral health education and promote organized dental health projects.

• THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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• v.73
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• pp.21-42
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• 2017

A BPO is an irrevocable undertaking given by an Obligor Bank acting on behalf of the buyer to a Recipient Bank acting on behalf of the seller to pay on satisfaction of certain specified conditions. There have been a Trade Service Utility(TSU), a Transaction Matching Application(TMA) and ISO 20022 TSMT messages that core electronic technical systems linked to the BPO. As a key usefulness of the BPO, it brings to market an alternative means of satisfying the risk mitigation, financing and information management needs of banks and businesses engaged in trade. That is, corporates can spread the risk among multiple Obligor Banks by requesting multiple BPOs for the same trade transaction not to exceed the value of the initial transaction. Since the BPO replaces the manual document checking process with the electronic matching of data, buyers and sellers will benefit from significantly increased accuracy and objectivity. By using BPO, buyers and sellers can become trusted counterparties by demonstrating reliability and giving sellers the assurance of being paid on time as per the payment terms and conditions agreed. When compared to L/C, the BPO requires submission of data only. This requires a change of practice of those accustomed to dealing with physical documentation. The beneficiary of a BPO is the Recipient Bank which is always the Seller's Bank. In the meantime, banks will need to agree between themselves that the URBPO 750 will be applied, modified or excluded. However, customers of banks will face low transactional costs due to a fully automated process and standardized data formats used in international trade documentation. There is no amendment and cancellation rules in the URBPO 750s, but only have Assignment of Proceeds rules. As a result, the BPO is likely to enable new business opportunities, lower costs, fast transaction process and strengthen key customer relationships.

• Journal of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.78-89
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• 2000

The quality of a product/system is getting more important concept nowadays. 'Performance', as one of the quality characteristics, means how well a product carries out its given functions and is the most adjacent characteristics to the customer satisfaction. To an engineer, however, who deals with large structures such as ships, 'Safety' is actually getting more important because of its direct relationship with failures of a product/system itself and human injuries when an accident occurs. In this study, therefore, we consider both performance and safety recognized the most important elements in dealing with structures and present a quality analysis method based on customer requirements by using QFD for performance analysis and FMEA for safety analysis respectively. Applying these methods to the hatchway of a bulk carrier, we could find 8 and 12 important parts based on performance and safety respectively. Among these, only 7 parts were pointed out commonly critical. From these, we can suggest that designers should pay more attention to these 7 parts and thus give a high priority of concerns to them when trying to improve the quality of system.

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.34-48
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• 2004

The purpose of this study is to explore emotion aspects of consumers purchasing clothing through cable television home shopping. Qualitative research method is used to widely understand how emotion aspects of consumers have effected on their purchasing behavior. The results of depth interviews may be classified into 13 feelings factors satisfaction, pleasure/delight, respect, attraction, fresh, convenience, unburdened, emptiness, displeasure/temper, anxiety, tedious, distrust, regret. The content of information acquiring from the process of clothing purchase decision making is analysed. In the problem recognition stage, purchase motivation were physical space (around people) and imaginary space(by how clothing goods are introduced to consumers thorough TV monitor). In the information search stage, purchasing action patterns to search information were situational pattern and habitual pattern. In alternative evaluation stage, the considering best important factors to choice clothes were quality, price, design, and color. In purchase stage, consumers said they felt anxiety, because of characteristics of purchase way that they should pay first and then received the ordered goods a fews days later. In post-purchase behavior stage, if consumers satisfied goods purchased through TV home shopping, they recommended it to around others, but unsatisfied with ordered goods, they tried to refund, exchange with anther one, or write it on homepage of the home shopping company.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.546-555
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• 1999

Objectives : To determine the prevalence, pattern. and out-of-pocket expenditure of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) utilization in Korean adult population. Methods : We conducted a representative telephone survey of 2,042 persons aged 18 or older. Data about any health problem, details of their use of medical doctors(MDs) offices/hospitals/pharmacies services and CAM during the preceding 12 months were collected with structured questionnaire. Results : The utilization rate of CAM among Korean adults was 29% in one year. A total of 231 kinds of CAM was identified from this survey. Annual out-of-pocket expenditure associated with CAM use in 1998 amounted to ${\xi}{\S}1.88$ billion and was comparable to 40.8% of out-of-pocket expenditure paid for MDs offices/hospitals/pharmacies services. Among those(N=424) who paid for both MDs offices/hospitals/pharmacies services an d CAM, 35.8% paid more for CAM. CAM gave more satisfaction than western medicine to those who had experience of both types of therapy. About half of CAM users were willing to recommend CAM to others. Disclosure rate to physician among CAM users was not high(40.6%). Conclusion : CAM became a popular source of health care in Korea, Korean spent a substantial amount of out-of-pocket money on CAM without any public control. Because CAM use is likely to be increased rapidly through lay referral system, health policy makers and health professionals should pay more attention to CAM for making appropriate utilization of CAM.

• Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association
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• v.47 no.9
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• pp.15-26
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• 2009

The main purpose of this study was to speculate how psychological state of adolescent students has changed their school uniform style. For the study, the distinctive characteristics during adolescence stage were theoretically examined. Through the examination, this study found four interests in fashions and school uniforms. For the purpose, this study conducted interviews with grade 2 students in a total of six coeducation secondary schools in Seoul, Gyeongki and Gwangju using a questionnaire. The survey period ranged from December 15 2008 to December 24 2008 and a total of 1196 were used for a final analysis. This study extracted factors as Principal Components Analysis and used Varimax for orthogonal rotation analysis. To measure confidence, it used Cronbach's a test to item internal consistency. For data analysis, it used SPSS WIN 12.0 and for hypothesis analysis, frequency analysis, cross analysis, independent t-test, and one-way ANOVA were conducted. For posterior analysis, it used Sheffe test. The results are as follows: First, the interests in fashion and school uniforms differed depending on their own tastes, but these interests were more influenced by environment around school. Secondly, the boy subjects were more aggressive towards repairs their uniforms than the girls, which suggested that boys had stronger desire to show themselves to others and more satisfaction from repairs their uniforms than the girls. Based on the results, this study concluded as follows: We should pay attention to preventing deformation in original design of school uniforms while expanding options to have variable designs or to change detailed part of design. So, there will be no additional uniform mending expense and financial loss to parents, and students will be more satisfied with their school uniforms.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.11 no.12
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• pp.4954-4961
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• 2010

Background: Competition among hospitals has intensified, because hospitals and beds are oversupplying and the global medical market has opened in Korea. Method: we developed questionnaires of the patient's satisfaction about 20 items. We surveyed 297 out-patients and 302 in-patients. We analyzed the descriptive statistics and regression by SPSS(Version 17) and Excel. Results: The relations with the patient's loyalty and the specialized hospital service are 1) Recommend to other person: FHR use and the assistant for follow-up treatment were related positively for out-patient and PHR and FHR use were related positively for out-patient. 2) Revisiting: PHR use and the need of an assistant for follow-up patients were related for them and the PayTV were negatively related. Conclusion: FHR, PHR and assistant system for follow-up patient's condition were very useful factors to increase patient's loyalty.