• Journal of muscle and joint health
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.17-40
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• 1995

Rheumatoid arthritis is the one of the chronic diseases, one of its major symptoms is a chronic pain. Despite developing medical treatment and surgical techniques, it is suggested that to control the pain is the goal of the treatment. But pain is an inner experience and even those closest to the patient cannot truly observe its progress or share in its suffering. The National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine's report on Pain and Disability concluded that there is no objective measure of pain-(exactly) no pain thermometer-nor can there ever be one, because the experience of pain is inseparable from personal perception and social influence such as culture. To explore chronic pain experience is to understand the process and property of the patient's perception of pain through the response to pain, the coping with pain, and the adaptation to pain. Therefore a qualitative study was conducted in order to gain an understanding of pain experience of patients with RA in korea. I used naturalistic inquiry as a research methodology, which had 5 axioms, the first is that realities are multiple, constructed, and holistic, the second is that knower and known are interactive, inseparable, the third is only time and context bound working hypotheses(idiographic statements) are possible, the forth is all entities are in a state of mutual simultaneous shaping, so that it is impossible to distinguish causes from effects and the last is that inquiry is value-bound. Purposive sampling was conducted as a sampling. 20 subjects who experienced pain over 10 years, lived in middle-sized city and big city in Korea, and 17 women and 3 men. The subject's age was from 32 to 62 (average 48.8), all were married, living with their spouse and children, except two-one divorced and the other widow before they became ill. I collected data using In depth structured interview. I had interviews two or three times with each subject, and the interviews were conducted at each subject's home. Each interview lasted about two hours an average. A recording was taken with the consent of the subject. I used inductive data analysis-such as unitizing and categorizing. unitizing is a process of coding, whereby raw data are systematically transformed and aggregated into units. Categorizing is a process wherby previously unitized data are organized into categories that provide descriptive or inferential information about the context or setting from which the units were derived. This process is used constant comparative method. The pain controlling process is composed of behavior of pain control. The behaviors of pain control are rearranging of ADL, hiddening role conflict, balancing treatment, and changing social relation. Rearranging of ADL includes diet management, sleep management, and the adjustment of daily life activities. The subjects try to rearrange their daily activities by modified style of motions, rearranging time span & range of activities, using auxillary facilities, and getting help in order to keep on the pace of daily life. Hiddening role conflict means to reduce conflicts between sick role and their role as a family member. In this process, the subjects use two modes, one is to control the pain complaints, and the other is to internalize the value which is to stay home is good for caring her children and being a good mother. To control pain complaints is done by 'enduring', 'understanding' the other family members, or making them undersood in order to reduce pain. Balancing treatment is composed of two aspects. One is to keep the pain within the endurable level, the other is to keep in touch with medical personnel in order to get the information of treatment and emotional support. Changing social relation is made by information seeking and sharing, formation of mutual support relation, and finally simplification of social relationships. The subjects simplify their social relationships by refraining from relations with someone who makes them physically and psychologically strained. In particular the subjects are apt to avoid contact with in-laws, and the change of relation to in-laws results in lessening the family boundary. In the course of this process, they confront the crisis of family confict result in family dissolution. This crisis is related to the threat of self-existence. Findings from this study contribute to understanding the chronic pain experience. To advance this study, we should compare this result with other cases in different cultural contexts. I think to interpret these results, korean cultural background should be considered. Especially the different family concept, more broader family members and kinship network, and the traditional medical knowledge influences patients' behavior.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.39-53
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• 2012

It is widely known that knowledge management plays a facilitating role that contributes to upgrading organizational performance. Knowledge management systems (KMS), especially, support the knowledge management process including the sharing, creating, and using of knowledge within a company, and maximize the value of knowledge resources within an organization. Despite this widely held belief, there are few studies that describe how companies actually develop, share, and practice their knowledge. Companies in the domestic small franchise sector, which are in the early stages in terms of knowledge management, need to improve their KMS to manage their franchisees effectively. From this perspective, this study uses a qualitative approach to explore the actual process of knowledge management implementation. This article presents a case study of PB (Paris Baguette) company, which is the first to build a KMS in the franchise industry. The study was able to confirm the following facts through the analysis of target companies. First, the chief executive's support is a critical success factor and this support can increase the participation of organization members. Second, it is important to build a process and culture that actively creates and leverages information in knowledge management activities. The organizational learning culture should be one where the creation, learning, and sharing of new knowledge is developed continuously. Third, a horizontal network organization is needed in order to make relationships within the organization more close-knit. Fourth, in order to connect the diverse processes such as knowledge acquisition, storage, and utilization of knowledge management activities, information technology (IT) capabilities are essential. Indeed, IT can be a powerful tool for improving the quality of work and maximizing the spread and use of knowledge. However, during the construction of an intranet based KMS, research is required to ensure that the most efficient system is implemented. Finally, proper evaluation and compensation are important success factors. In order to develop knowledge workers, an appropriate program of promotion and compensation should be established. Also, building members' confidence in the benefits of knowledge management should be an ongoing activity. The company developed its original KMS to achieve a flexible and proactive organization, and a new KMS to improve organizational and personal capabilities. The PB case shows that there are differences between participants perceptions and actual performance in managing knowledge; that knowledge management is not a matter of formality but a paradigm that assures the sharing of knowledge; and that IT boosts communication skills, thus creating a mutual relationship to enhance the flow of knowledge and information between people. Knowledge management for building organizational capabilities can be successful when considering its focus and ways to increase its acceptance. This study suggests guidelines for major factors that corporate executives of domestic franchises should consider to improve knowledge management and the higher operating activities that can be used.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.31-44
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• 2009

The objective of this study was to measure backscattering coefficients of paddy rice using a L-, C-, and X-band scatterometer system with full polarization and various angles during the rice growth period and to relate backscattering coefficients to rice growth parameters. Radar backscattering measurements of paddy rice field using multifrequency (L, C, and X) and full polarization were conducted at an experimental field located in National Academy of Agricultural Science (NAAS), Suwon, Korea. The scatterometer system consists of dual-polarimetric square horn antennas, HP8720D vector network analyzer ($20\;MHz{\sim}20\;GHz$), RF cables, and a personal computer that controls frequency, polarization and data storage. The backscattering coefficients were calculated by applying radar equation for the measured at incidence angles between $20^{\circ}$ and $60^{\circ}$ with $5^{\circ}$ interval for four polarization (HH, VV, HV, VH), respectively. We measured the temporal variations of backscattering coefficients of the rice crop at L-, C-, X-band during a rice growth period. In three bands, VV-polarized backscattering coefficients were higher than hh-polarized backscattering coefficients during rooting stage (mid-June) and HH-polarized backscattering coefficients were higher than VV-, HV/VH-polarized backscattering coefficients after panicle initiation stage (mid-July). Cross polarized backscattering coefficients in X-band increased towards the heading stage (mid-Aug) and thereafter saturated, again increased near the harvesting season. Backscattering coefficients of range at X-band were lower than that of L-, C-band. HH-, VV-polarized ${\sigma}^{\circ}$ steadily increased toward panicle initiation stage and thereafter decreased, and again increased near the harvesting season. We plotted the relationship between backscattering coefficients with L-, C-, X-band and rice growth parameters. Biomass was correlated with L-band hh-polarization at a large incident angle. LAI (Leaf Area Index) was highly correlated with C-band HH- and cross-polarizations. Grain weight was correlated with backscattering coefficients of X-band VV-polarization at a large incidence angle. X-band was sensitive to grain maturity during the post heading stage.

• The Korean Journal of Archival Studies
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• no.46
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• pp.95-152
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• 2015

"Archives of Everyday Life" refers to an organization or facility which collects, appraises, selects and preserves the document from the memory of individuals, groups, or a society through categorizing and classifying lives and cultures of ordinary people. The document includes materials such as diaries, autobiography, letters, and notes. It also covers any digital files or hypertext like posts from blogs and online communities, or photos uploaded on Social Network Services. Many research fields including the Records Management Studies has continuously claimed the necessity of collection and preservation of ordinary people's records on daily life produced every moment. Especially diary is a written record reflecting the facts experienced by an individual and his self-examination. Its originality, individuality and uniqueness are considered truly valuable as a document regardless of the era. Lately many diaries have been discovered and presented to the historical research communities, and diverse researchers in human and social studies have embarked more in-depth research on diaries, their authors, and social background of the time. Furthermore, researchers from linguistics, educational studies, and psychology analyze linguistic behaviors, status of cultural assimilation, and emotional or psychological changes of an author. In this study, we are conducting a metastudy from various research on diaries in order to reaffirm the value of "The 12th May Diaries Collection" as everyday life archives. "The 12th May Diaries Collection" consists of diaries produced and donated directly by citizens on the 12th May every year. It was only 2013 when Digital Archiving Institute in Univ. of Myungji organized the first "Annual call for the 12th May". Now more than 2,000 items were collected including hand writing diaries, digital documents, photos, audio and video files, etc. The age of participants also varies from children to senior citizens. In this study, quantitative analysis will be made on the diaries collected as well as more profound discoveries on the detailed contents of each item. It is not difficult to see stories about family and friends, school life, concerns over career path, daily life and feelings of citizens ranging all different generations, regions, and professions. Based on keyword and descriptors of each item, more comprehensive examination will be further made. Additionally this study will also provide suggestions to examine future research opportunities of these diaries for different fields such as linguistics, educational studies, historical studies or humanities considering diverse formats and contents of diaries. Finally this study will also discuss necessary tasks and challenges for "the 12th May Diaries Collection" to be continuously collected and preserved as Everyday Life Archives.

• Journal of Korea Entertainment Industry Association
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.27-40
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• 2020

The marathon has long been established as a representative lifestyle for all ages. With the recent expansion of the Work and Life Balance trend across the society, marathon with a relatively low barrier to entry is gaining popularity among young people in their 20s and 30s. By analyzing the issues and related words of the marathon event, we will analyze the spottainment elements of the marathon event that is popular among young people through keywords, and suggest a development plan for the differentiated event. In order to analyze keywords and related words, blogs, cafes and news provided by Naver and Daum were selected as analysis channels, and 'JTBC Marathon' and 'Culture' were extracted as key words for data search. The data analysis period was limited to a three-month period from August 13, 2019 to November 13, 2019, when the application for participation in the 2019 JTBC Marathon was started. For data collection and analysis, frequency and matrix data were extracted through social matrix program Textom. In addition, the degree of the relationship was quantified by analyzing the connection structure and the centrality of the degree of connection between the words. Although the marathon is a personal movement, young people share a common denominator of "running" and form a new cultural group called "running crew" with other young people. Through this, it was found that a marathon competition culture was formed as a festival venue where people could train together, participate together, and escape from the image of a marathon run alone and fight with themselves.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.87-100
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• 2022

Early start-up companies have an inherent limitation of lack of resources. Despite these limitations, in order to survive, the entrepreneur's personal ability to efficiently use limited resources is required. In the marketing field, various studies are needed to reduce the business failure rate through establishing growth strategies and innovation. Accordingly, it is necessary to apply the concept of entrepreneurial marketing, which has been researched and developed overseas for 30 years, to fit the domestic reality. According to the flow of this study, an empirical study should be preceded to clarify the influence relationship between entrepreneurial marketing orientation, marketing competency, and management performance, along with a theoretical theorem on entrepreneurial marketing that is suitable for early start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises(SMEs) and can respond innovatively to changes. The establishment of entrepreneurial marketing orientation and the processes from which this concept leads to business performance through the organization's marketing capabilities and its effects will be empirically verified. For an empirical survey, a survey was conducted on founders of 220 companies, and path analysis using structural equations was used for hypothesis verification. The findings are as follows. First, it was found that the entrepreneurial marketing orientation had a positive effect on both the organization's marketing capabilities and management performance. Second, it was found that the organization's marketing capabilities also had a positive effect on management performance. Third, as a result of empirical analysis of the mediating effect of the organization's marketing capabilities on the relationship between entrepreneurial marketing orientation and management performance, it was found that marketing capabilities showed a greater mediating effect on non-financial performance than financial performance. On the other hand, it was confirmed that marketing performance had a stronger mediating effect on financial performance than non-financial performance. By confirming and presenting the concept and constituent factors of entrepreneurial marketing orientation of domestic start-ups, which were academic gaps for the purpose of this paper, the academic research is differentiated in that they were verified as six components of entrepreneurial marketing. The practical implications of the research results will be that the entrepreneurial marketing-oriented mindset of small and medium-sized companies will optimize market analysis capabilities, network with various stakeholders, and increase the organization's ability to demonstrate marketing capabilities.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.19-42
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• 2012

Consumer consumption patterns are shifting rapidly as buyers migrate from offline markets to e-commerce routes, such as shopping channels on TV and internet shopping malls. In the offline markets consumers go shopping, see the shopping items, and choose from them. Recently consumers tend towards buying at shopping sites free from time and place. However, as e-commerce markets continue to expand, customers are complaining that it is becoming a bigger hassle to shop online. In the online shopping, shoppers have very limited information on the products. The delivered products can be different from what they have wanted. This case results to purchase cancellation. Because these things happen frequently, they are likely to refer to the consumer reviews and companies should be concerned about consumer's voice. E-commerce is a very important marketing tool for suppliers. It can recommend products to customers and connect them directly with suppliers with just a click of a button. The recommender system is being studied in various ways. Some of the more prominent ones include recommendation based on best-seller and demographics, contents filtering, and collaborative filtering. However, these systems all share two weaknesses : they cannot recommend products to consumers on a personal level, and they cannot recommend products to new consumers with no buying history. To fix these problems, we can use the information which has been collected from the questionnaires about their demographics and preference ratings. But, consumers feel these questionnaires are a burden and are unlikely to provide correct information. This study investigates combining collaborative filtering with the centrality of social network analysis. This centrality measure provides the information to infer the preference of new consumers from the shopping history of existing and previous ones. While the past researches had focused on the existing consumers with similar shopping patterns, this study tried to improve the accuracy of recommendation with all shopping information, which included not only similar shopping patterns but also dissimilar ones. Data used in this study, Movie Lens' data, was made by Group Lens research Project Team at University of Minnesota to recommend movies with a collaborative filtering technique. This data was built from the questionnaires of 943 respondents which gave the information on the preference ratings on 1,684 movies. Total data of 100,000 was organized by time, with initial data of 50,000 being existing customers and the latter 50,000 being new customers. The proposed recommender system consists of three systems : [+] group recommender system, [-] group recommender system, and integrated recommender system. [+] group recommender system looks at customers with similar buying patterns as 'neighbors', whereas [-] group recommender system looks at customers with opposite buying patterns as 'contraries'. Integrated recommender system uses both of the aforementioned recommender systems to recommend movies that both recommender systems pick. The study of three systems allows us to find the most suitable recommender system that will optimize accuracy and customer satisfaction. Our analysis showed that integrated recommender system is the best solution among the three systems studied, followed by [-] group recommended system and [+] group recommender system. This result conforms to the intuition that the accuracy of recommendation can be improved using all the relevant information. We provided contour maps and graphs to easily compare the accuracy of each recommender system. Although we saw improvement on accuracy with the integrated recommender system, we must remember that this research is based on static data with no live customers. In other words, consumers did not see the movies actually recommended from the system. Also, this recommendation system may not work well with products other than movies. Thus, it is important to note that recommendation systems need particular calibration for specific product/customer types.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.63-86
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• 2010

Personalized services directly and indirectly acquire personal data, in part, to provide customers with higher-value services that are specifically context-relevant (such as place and time). Information technologies continue to mature and develop, providing greatly improved performance. Sensory networks and intelligent software can now obtain context data, and that is the cornerstone for providing personalized, context-specific services. Yet, the danger of overflowing personal information is increasing because the data retrieved by the sensors usually contains privacy information. Various technical characteristics of context-aware applications have more troubling implications for information privacy. In parallel with increasing use of context for service personalization, information privacy concerns have also increased such as an unrestricted availability of context information. Those privacy concerns are consistently regarded as a critical issue facing context-aware personalized service success. The entire field of information privacy is growing as an important area of research, with many new definitions and terminologies, because of a need for a better understanding of information privacy concepts. Especially, it requires that the factors of information privacy should be revised according to the characteristics of new technologies. However, previous information privacy factors of context-aware applications have at least two shortcomings. First, there has been little overview of the technology characteristics of context-aware computing. Existing studies have only focused on a small subset of the technical characteristics of context-aware computing. Therefore, there has not been a mutually exclusive set of factors that uniquely and completely describe information privacy on context-aware applications. Second, user survey has been widely used to identify factors of information privacy in most studies despite the limitation of users' knowledge and experiences about context-aware computing technology. To date, since context-aware services have not been widely deployed on a commercial scale yet, only very few people have prior experiences with context-aware personalized services. It is difficult to build users' knowledge about context-aware technology even by increasing their understanding in various ways: scenarios, pictures, flash animation, etc. Nevertheless, conducting a survey, assuming that the participants have sufficient experience or understanding about the technologies shown in the survey, may not be absolutely valid. Moreover, some surveys are based solely on simplifying and hence unrealistic assumptions (e.g., they only consider location information as a context data). A better understanding of information privacy concern in context-aware personalized services is highly needed. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to identify a generic set of factors for elemental information privacy concern in context-aware personalized services and to develop a rank-order list of information privacy concern factors. We consider overall technology characteristics to establish a mutually exclusive set of factors. A Delphi survey, a rigorous data collection method, was deployed to obtain a reliable opinion from the experts and to produce a rank-order list. It, therefore, lends itself well to obtaining a set of universal factors of information privacy concern and its priority. An international panel of researchers and practitioners who have the expertise in privacy and context-aware system fields were involved in our research. Delphi rounds formatting will faithfully follow the procedure for the Delphi study proposed by Okoli and Pawlowski. This will involve three general rounds: (1) brainstorming for important factors; (2) narrowing down the original list to the most important ones; and (3) ranking the list of important factors. For this round only, experts were treated as individuals, not panels. Adapted from Okoli and Pawlowski, we outlined the process of administrating the study. We performed three rounds. In the first and second rounds of the Delphi questionnaire, we gathered a set of exclusive factors for information privacy concern in context-aware personalized services. The respondents were asked to provide at least five main factors for the most appropriate understanding of the information privacy concern in the first round. To do so, some of the main factors found in the literature were presented to the participants. The second round of the questionnaire discussed the main factor provided in the first round, fleshed out with relevant sub-factors. Respondents were then requested to evaluate each sub factor's suitability against the corresponding main factors to determine the final sub-factors from the candidate factors. The sub-factors were found from the literature survey. Final factors selected by over 50% of experts. In the third round, a list of factors with corresponding questions was provided, and the respondents were requested to assess the importance of each main factor and its corresponding sub factors. Finally, we calculated the mean rank of each item to make a final result. While analyzing the data, we focused on group consensus rather than individual insistence. To do so, a concordance analysis, which measures the consistency of the experts' responses over successive rounds of the Delphi, was adopted during the survey process. As a result, experts reported that context data collection and high identifiable level of identical data are the most important factor in the main factors and sub factors, respectively. Additional important sub-factors included diverse types of context data collected, tracking and recording functionalities, and embedded and disappeared sensor devices. The average score of each factor is very useful for future context-aware personalized service development in the view of the information privacy. The final factors have the following differences comparing to those proposed in other studies. First, the concern factors differ from existing studies, which are based on privacy issues that may occur during the lifecycle of acquired user information. However, our study helped to clarify these sometimes vague issues by determining which privacy concern issues are viable based on specific technical characteristics in context-aware personalized services. Since a context-aware service differs in its technical characteristics compared to other services, we selected specific characteristics that had a higher potential to increase user's privacy concerns. Secondly, this study considered privacy issues in terms of service delivery and display that were almost overlooked in existing studies by introducing IPOS as the factor division. Lastly, in each factor, it correlated the level of importance with professionals' opinions as to what extent users have privacy concerns. The reason that it did not select the traditional method questionnaire at that time is that context-aware personalized service considered the absolute lack in understanding and experience of users with new technology. For understanding users' privacy concerns, professionals in the Delphi questionnaire process selected context data collection, tracking and recording, and sensory network as the most important factors among technological characteristics of context-aware personalized services. In the creation of a context-aware personalized services, this study demonstrates the importance and relevance of determining an optimal methodology, and which technologies and in what sequence are needed, to acquire what types of users' context information. Most studies focus on which services and systems should be provided and developed by utilizing context information on the supposition, along with the development of context-aware technology. However, the results in this study show that, in terms of users' privacy, it is necessary to pay greater attention to the activities that acquire context information. To inspect the results in the evaluation of sub factor, additional studies would be necessary for approaches on reducing users' privacy concerns toward technological characteristics such as highly identifiable level of identical data, diverse types of context data collected, tracking and recording functionality, embedded and disappearing sensor devices. The factor ranked the next highest level of importance after input is a context-aware service delivery that is related to output. The results show that delivery and display showing services to users in a context-aware personalized services toward the anywhere-anytime-any device concept have been regarded as even more important than in previous computing environment. Considering the concern factors to develop context aware personalized services will help to increase service success rate and hopefully user acceptance for those services. Our future work will be to adopt these factors for qualifying context aware service development projects such as u-city development projects in terms of service quality and hence user acceptance.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.143-155
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• 2011

Lately electronic tagging policy for the sexual offenders was introduced in order to reduce and prevent sexual offences. However, most sexual offences against children happening these days are committed by the tagged offenders whose identities have been released. So, for the crime prevention, we need measures with which we could minimize the suffers more promptly and actively. This paper suggests a new system to relieve the sexual abuse related anxiety of the children and solve the problems that electronic bracelet has. Existing bracelets are only worn by serious criminals, and it's only for risk management and positioning, there is no way to protect the children who are the potential victims of sexual abuse and there actually happened some cases. So we suggest also letting the students(children) wear the LBS(Location Based Service) and USN(Ubiquitous Sensor Network) technology based electronic bracelets to monitor and figure out dangerous situations intelligently, so that we could prevent sexual offences against children beforehand, and while a crime is happening, we could judge the situation of the crime intelligently and take swift action to minimize the suffer. And by checking students' attendance and position, guardians could know where their children are in real time and could protect the children from not only sexual offences but also violent crimes against children like kidnapping. The overall system is like follows : RFID Tag for children monitors the approach of offenders. While an offender's RFID tag is approaching, it will transmit the situation and position as the first warning message to the control center and the guardians. When the offender is going far away, it turns to monitoring mode, and if the tag of the child or the offender is taken off or the child and offender stay at one position for 3~5 minutes or longer, then it will consider this as a dangerous situation, then transmit the emergency situations and position as the second warning message to the control center and the guardians, and ask for the dispatch of police to prevent the crime at the initial stage. The RFID module of criminals' electronic bracelets is RFID TAG, and the RFID module for the children is RFID receiver(reader), so wherever the offenders are, if an offender is at a place within 20m from a child, RFID module for children will transmit the situation every certain periods to the control center by the automatic response of the receiver. As for the positioning module, outdoors GPS or mobile communications module(CELL module)is used and UWB, WI-FI based module is used indoors. The sensor is set under the purpose of making it possible to measure the position coordinates even indoors, so that one could send his real time situation and position to the server of central control center. By using the RFID electronic roll book system of educational institutions and safety system installed at home, children's position and situation can be checked. When the child leaves for school, attendance can be checked through the electronic roll book, and when school is over the information is sent to the guardians. And using RFID access control turnstiles installed at the apartment or entrance of the house, the arrival of the children could be checked and the information is transmitted to the guardians. If the student is absent or didn't arrive at home, the information of the child is sent to the central control center from the electronic roll book or access control turnstiles, and look for the position of the child's electronic bracelet using GPS or mobile communications module, then send the information to the guardians and teacher so that they could report to the police immediately if necessary. Central management and control system is built under the purpose of monitoring dangerous situations and guardians' checking. It saves the warning and pattern data to figure out the areas with dangerous situation, and could help introduce crime prevention systems like CCTV with the highest priority. And by DB establishment personal data could be saved, the frequency of first and second warnings made, the terminal ID of the specific child and offender, warning made position, situation (like approaching, taken off of the electronic bracelet, same position for a certain time) and so on could be recorded, and the data is going to be used for preventing crimes. Even though we've already introduced electronic tagging to prevent recurrence of child sexual offences, but the crimes continuously occur. So I suggest this system to prevent crimes beforehand concerning the children's safety. If we make electronic bracelets easy to use and carry, and set the price reasonably so that many children can use, then lots of criminals could be prevented and we can protect the children easily. By preventing criminals before happening, it is going to be a helpful system for our safe life.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.65-96
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• 2012

Brand has received much attention from considerable marketing research. When consumers consume product or services, they are exposed to a lot of brand related stimuli. These contain brand personality, brand experience, brand identity, brand communications and so on. A special kind of new crisis occasionally confronting companies' brand management today is the brand related rumor. An important influence on consumers' purchase decision making is the word-of-mouth spread by other consumers and most decisions are influenced by other's recommendations. In light of this influence, firms have reasonable reason to study and understand consumer-to-consumer communication such as brand rumor. The importance of brand rumor to marketers is increasing as the number of internet user and SNS(social network service) site grows. Due to the development of internet technology, people can spread rumors without the limitation of time, space and place. However relatively few studies have been published in marketing journals and little is known about brand rumors in the marketplace. The study of rumor has a long history in all major social science. But very few studies have dealt with the antecedents and consequences of any kind of brand rumor. Rumor has been generally described as a story or statement in general circulation without proper confirmation or certainty as to fact. And it also can be defined as an unconfirmed proposition, passed along from people to people. Rosnow(1991) claimed that rumors were transmitted because people needed to explain ambiguous and uncertain events and talking about them reduced associated anxiety. Especially negative rumors are believed to have the potential to devastate a company's reputation and relations with customers. From the perspective of marketer, negative rumors are considered harmful and extremely difficult to control in general. It is becoming a threat to a company's sustainability and sometimes leads to negative brand image and loss of customers. Thus there is a growing concern that these negative rumors can damage brands' reputations and lead them to financial disaster too. In this study we aimed to distinguish antecedents of brand rumor transmission and investigate the effects of brand rumor characteristics on rumor spread intention. We also found key components in personal acceptance of brand rumor. In contextualist perspective, we tried to unify the traditional psychological and sociological views. In this unified research approach we defined brand rumor's characteristics based on five major variables that had been found to influence the process of rumor spread intention. The five factors of usefulness, source credibility, message credibility, worry, and vividness, encompass multi level elements of brand rumor. We also selected product involvement as a control variable. To perform the empirical research, imaginary Korean 'Kimch' brand and related contamination rumor was created and proposed. Questionnaires were collected from 178 Korean samples. Data were collected from college students who have been experienced the focal product. College students were regarded as good subjects because they have a tendency to express their opinions in detail. PLS(partial least square) method was adopted to analyze the relations between variables in the equation model. The most widely adopted causal modeling method is LISREL. However it is poorly suited to deal with relatively small data samples and can yield not proper solutions in some cases. PLS has been developed to avoid some of these limitations and provide more reliable results. To test the reliability using SPSS 16 s/w, Cronbach alpha was examined and all the values were appropriate showing alpha values between .802 and .953. Subsequently, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted successfully. And structural equation modeling has been used to analyze the research model using smartPLS(ver. 2.0) s/w. Overall, R² of adoption of rumor is .476 and R² of intention of rumor transmission is .218. The overall model showed a satisfactory fit. The empirical results can be summarized as follows. According to the results, the variables of brand rumor characteristic such as source credibility, message credibility, worry, and vividness affect argument strength of rumor. And argument strength of rumor also affects rumor intention. On the other hand, the relationship between perceived usefulness and argument strength of rumor is not significant. The moderating effect of product involvement on the relations between argument strength of rumor and rumor W.O.M intention is not supported neither. Consequently this study suggests some managerial and academic implications. We consider some implications for corporate crisis management planning, PR and brand management. This results show marketers that rumor is a critical factor for managing strong brand assets. Also for researchers, brand rumor should become an important thesis of their interests to understand the relationship between consumer and brand. Recently many brand managers and marketers have focused on the short-term view. They just focused on strengthen the positive brand image. According to this study we suggested that effective brand management requires managing negative brand rumors with a long-term view of marketing decisions.