• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.71-76
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• 2015

Developed countries have set seed industry as a new growth engine, which demands strong support from the government. Multinational seed companies such as Monsanto and DuPont have made huge financial investment to secure their major roles in the global market. To spur domestic seed industry performance, Korean government laid out the foundation for developing seed industry through policy promotion in the late 2000s. In this paper, I look at the current state of the domestic and international seed market to provide information for improving the efficiency of the propulsion of the Golden Seed Project (GSP) along with its vision. The increasing size of global giant companies has been regarded to monopolize the world seed industry wherein ten renowned companies occupy 73% of the overall global market. In effect, this causes a price hike due to limited seed choices. Domestic seed market has been stuck in a range due to a sustained low agricultural production resulting in decreased seed demand and market size. Though breeding technologies for rice and vegetables are world-class, the technologies for top global crops such as cabbage, paprika, and forage are insufficient therefore professionals in this field are not easily employed. Moreover, there is a lack in appropriate infrastructure set up in the universities which adds to ineffective training of professionals. Being a key-supporting industry for agriculture, seed industry should be granted with strong and sustainable investment support from the government. In view thereof, GSP, which started in 2012, ambitions to spur researches outlined by excellent professionals in universities and seed companies aimed to drive seed export volume and quality and attain domestic seed self-sufficiency through adoption of export- and import-substitution seed types (10 varieties each) development strategies. To develop Korea's seed industry excellent achievement of GSP's goals should be drawn successfully and to do this beside development of high quality seeds, support programs for promotion of seed exports are also needed.

• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.7-16
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• 2012

Despite the enforcement of SSM control laws such as 'the Law of Developing the Distribution Industry (LDDI)' and 'the Law of Promoting Mutual Cooperation between Large and Small/medium Enterprises (LPMC)' stipulating the business adjustment system, the number of super-supermarkets (SSMs) has ever been expanding in Korea. In France, however, Super Centers are being regulated most strongly and directly in the whole Europe viewing that there is not a single SSM in Paris, which is emphasized to be the outcome from French government's regulation exerted on the opening of large scale retail stores. In France, the authority to approve store opening is deeply centralized and the store opening regulation is a socio-economic regulation driven by economic laws whereas EU strongly regulates the distribution industry. To control the French distribution industry, such seven laws and regulations as Commission départementale d'urbanisme commercial guidelines (CDLIC) (1969), the Royer Law (1973), the Doubin Law (1990), the Sapin Law (1993), the Raffarin Law (1996), solidarite et renouvellement urbains (SRU) (2000), and Loi de modernisation de l'économie (LME) (2009) have been promulgated one by one since the amendment of the Fontanet guidelines, through which commercial adjustment laws and regulations have been complemented and reinforced while regulatory measures have been taken. Even in the course of forming such strong regulatory laws, InterMarche, the largest supermarket chain in France, has been in existence as a global enterprise specialized in retail distribution with over 4,000 stores in Europe. InterMarche's business can be divided largely into two segments of food and non-food. As a supermarket chain, InterMarche's food segment has 2,300 stores in Europe and as a hard-discounter store chain in France, Netto has 420 stores. Restaumarch is a chain of traditional family restaurants and the steak house restaurant chain of Poivre Rouge has 4 restaurants currently. In addition, there are others like Ecomarche which is a supermarket chain for small and medium cities. In the non-food segment, the DIY and gardening chain of Bricomarche has a total of 620 stores in Europe. And the car-related chain of Roady has a total of 158 stores in Europe. There is the clothing chain of Veti as well. In view of InterMarche's management strategies, since its distribution strategy is to sell goods at cheap prices, buying goods cheap only is not enough. In other words, in order to sell goods cheap, it is all important to buy goods cheap, manage them cheap, systemize them cheap, and transport them cheap. In quality assurance, InterMarche has guaranteed the purchase safety for consumers by providing its own private brand products. InterMarche has 90 private brands of its own, thus being the retailer with the largest number of distributor brands in France. In view of its IT service strategy, InterMarche is utilizing a high performance IT system so as to obtainas much of the market information as possible and also to find out the best locations for opening stores. In its global expansion strategy of international alliance, InterMarche has established the ALDIS group together with the distribution enterprises of both Spain and Germany in order to expand its food purchase, whereas in the non-food segment, it has established the ARENA group in alliance with 11 international distribution enterprises. Such strategies of InterMarche have been intended to find out the consumer needs for both price and quality of goods and to secure the purchase and supply networks which are closely localized. It is necessary to cope promptly with the constantly changing circumstances through being unified with relevant regions and by providing diversified customer services as well. In view of the InterMarche's positive policy for promoting local partnerships as well as the assistance for enhancing the local economic structure, implications are existing for those retail distributors of our country.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Culture
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.379-394
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• 1994

The purpose of this study was to identify the correlation between the factors influencing on housewives' decision-making processes of organic foods and the relating variables, and the 5 stages of decision-making processes of the EBK model is utilized in this study. The sample was selected from 411 housewives living in Seoul from 1st of September through 20th of September, 1993. Frequency, Percentage, Mean, Factor analysis, One-way ANOVA, Duncan's multiple range test, t-Test, Correlation, Multiple regression analysis and Path analysis were measured. Major results are as follows: 1. Purchasing motivation of the organic foods were in order of the health care, nutritive value and taste care. 2. The major informations source for the knowledge of organic foods were in order of TV/radio, newspaper/magazine, recommendations informations and advice through a family/friends/acquaintances. 3. Evalution criteria in shopping of organic foods, the total degree of consideration over the purchasing factors of organic foods was fairly high level: consumers thought much of the sanitation/freshness, nutritive value and the food safety. In this regard opinion leaders was dominantly mass media. Consumers have a tendency to purchase organic foods in consideration of their children and husband. 4. Major place to purchase organic foods are super markets and department stores. And When shopping organic foods, housewives by all means confirm the check points in their own mind, which were expiry date, manufactured date and packing condition, but unexpectedly manufactured company was out of concern. 5. Housewives usually satisfy with decision after purchasing organic foods, while they were fairly unsatisfied with the price, quality, incomplete description for ingredients and manufactured date. 6. The variables influencing to the sincerity when selecting the most desired organic foods is how be cares about the natural freshness of the foods and the types of residents in order. Another interesting tendency is the richer they are very considerate to decide. It is to say the people who cares more about the natural freshness is the sincerer when making decision and also the class who lives in the apartment house enjoying high income do not easily accept the product quality.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.95-111
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• 2015

This purpose of this study is to academically define what "luxury products" mean, and to clarify the cognitive structural relationship between product attributes and "luxuriousness" in relation to the determinant of luxuriousness that eventually affects the purchase intention of consumers. This study is also written under the theory that luxuriousness leads to benefits such as functional benefit, experiential benefit, symbolic benefit, and exclusive benefit; which all provide core values to consumers and serve as effect factors that influence the psychological satisfaction of consumers. The commonly discussed measure of the determinant of luxuriousness has often failed to adequately describe the reasons to why the consumers prefer luxury products. This study also aims to suggest a new path in how and what the consumers perceive as luxury products, and to conceptualize what luxuriousness means in the marketing perspectives on the background of a previous theory. The part of product attributes are divided in the following sections: the quality and design of functional cues and brands of symbolic cues, as well as prices. The part of the determinant of luxuriousness is divided in sections of superiority, scarcity, differentiation, and traditionality. Therefore, this study used the theoretical concept used in such common measures as well as 282 examples to empirically analyze the relationship between product attributes and luxuriousness of luxury products, and how such affect the purchase intentions of consumers. The survey used to aid this study targeted luxury product consumers regarding "B" brand of automobiles. Using the analysis through a structural equation model, the study draws a conclusion that in a relationship between product attributes and luxuriousness, quality(which is one of the functional cues) affects the facts of superiority, differentiation in a significant way, and design affects the factors of scarcity in a significant way. And brand(one of the symbolic cues) significantly affects the factors of traditionality within the luxuriousness factors, and price appeared to affect superiority and scarcity. Additionally, the brand of product attributes significantly affects purchase intention, and superiority and scarcity of luxuriousness affects purchase intention in a significant way. The structural concept of luxury and luxuriousness suggested in the study will provide the theoretical basis for building a new case study, and the determinants of luxuriousness in the marketing perspective will be a practical help for checking the consumers' psychological reasons for purchase.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.131-154
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• 2013

New internet technologies have created a revolutionary new platform which allows consumers to make decision about product price and quality quickly and provides information about themselves through the transcript of online reviews. By expressing their feelings toward products or services on virtual opinion platforms, users extend their influence into cyberspace as electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM). Existing research indicates that an impact of eWOM on the consumer decision process is influential. For both academic researchers and practitioners, investigating this phenomenon of information sharing in online website is essential given the increasing number of consumers using them as sources of purchase decisions. It is worthwhile to examine the extent to which opinion seekers are willing to accept and adopt online reviews and which factors encourage adoption. Discerning the most motivating aspects of information adoption in particular, could help electronic marketers better promote their brand and presence on the internet. The objectives of this study are to investigate how online WOM influences a persons' purchase decision by discovering which factors encourage information adoption. Especially focused on the self-efficacy, this research investigates how self-efficacy affects on information usefulness and adoption of online information. Although people are exposed to same review or comment about product or service, some accept the reviews while others do not. We notice that accepting online reviews mainly depends on the person's preference or personal characteristics. This study empirically examines this issue by using cognitive dissonance theory. Specifically, in the movie industry, we address few questions-is always positive WOM generating positive effect? What if the movie isn't the person's favorite genre? What if the person who is very self-assertive so doesn't take other's opinion easily? In these cases of cognitive dissonance, is always WOM generating same result? While many studies have focused on one direct of WOM which indicates positive (or negative) informative reviews or comments generate positive (or negative) results and more (or less) profits, this study investigates not only directional properties of WOM but also how people change their opinion towards product or service positive to negative, negative to positive through the online WOM. An experiment was conducted quantitatively by using a sample of 168 users who have experience within the online movie review site, 'Naver Movie'. Users were required to complete a survey regarding reviews and comments taken from the real movie page. The data reflected user's perceptions of online WOM information that determined users' adoption level. Analysis results provide empirical support for the proposed theoretical perspective. When user can't agree with the opinion of online WOM information, in other words, when cognitive dissonance between online WOM information and users' preference occurs, perceived self-efficacy significantly decreases customers' perception of usefulness. And this perception of usefulness plays an important role in determining users' intention to adopt online WOM information. Most of researches have been concentrated on characteristics of online WOM itself such as quality or vividness of information, credibility of source and direction of online WOM, etc. for describing effect of online WOM, but our results suggest that users' personal character (e.g., self-efficacy) plays decisive role for acceptance of online WOM information. Higher self-efficacy means lower possibility to accept the information that represents counter opinion because of cognitive dissonance, whereas the people that have lower self-efficacy are willing to accept the online WOM information as true and refer to purchase decision. This study suggests a model for understanding role of direction of online WOM information. Also, our result implicates the importance of online review supervision and personalized information service by confirming switching opinion negative to positive is more difficult than positive to negative through the online WOM information. This implication would help marketers to manage online reviews of their products or services.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• v.37 no.11
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• pp.1443-1451
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• 2008

This study was performed to develop menu satisfaction index in Business & Industry (B&I) food service and to survey customer's menu satisfaction using the index. The menu satisfaction index included 16 items with Likert 5 point. Cronbach's alpha to assess the internal reliability of the developed scales was 0.8917, which indicated highly reliable. Construct validity was assessed by principal components analysis and then four factors explaining 65.964% of the total variance were found. Among the 15 items of menu satisfaction, the average scores of all items were above 3.0 out of 5. As a result of analysis on menu satisfaction factors, 'propriety of food temperature' (3.52 out of 5) was the highest consideration followed by 'sufficiency of format' (3.46), 'excellence in food' (3.35) and 'well-being orientation' (3.31). It could be said that customer's perception on the menu quality was very positive. Four factors were correlated with overall menu satisfaction positively. Especially, 'excellence in food', and 'well-being orientation' and 'sufficiency of format' affected significantly on overall menu satisfaction. It concluded that customers were satisfied with portion size, temperature, price but their needs for taste and health/nutrition-related service would be increased. The menu satisfaction developed in this study should be applied to other B & I food service operation by type.

• Journal of Animal Science and Technology
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• v.51 no.5
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• pp.395-406
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• 2009

Fifty four Hanwoo steers in final fattening period were assigned to 3 groups control, top dressed $PROSOL^{(R)}$ as an emulsifier (TP) and DSP group (experimental diet made to down spec of nutrients with $PROSOL^{(R)}$, which is sodium stearoyl-2-lactylate), based on the body weight (647.96${\pm}$41.31 kg) and months of age (27.3${\pm}$0.8 mo), and the experiment was conducted to establish the reasonable fattening method of Hanwoo steers for 91 days. Average daily body gains during trial were 0.94, 0.84 and 0.98 kg in control, TP and DSP, respectively (P=0.011). DDMI/ADG of TP group tend to lightly improving compared to control and DSP group (P=0.692). There was no effect of supplementation of the $PROSOL^{(R)}$ in concentrates on growth rate, feed efficiency and shrinkage in Hanwoo steers during the short final fattening period. MQI from TP and DSP was not different based on the rib-eye area and carcass weight in carcass than that from control. Back fat thickness tended to be thicker than control (P>0.05). Marbling score, texture and maturity for TP and DSP was abundantly to increase compared to control (P<0.003). There was significantly increment in supplemented $PROSOL^{(R)}$ (P<0.0001). The meat quality grade of control, TP and DSP were 2.94, 3.78 and 4.50, respectively. Related to this result, the auction price (carcass/kg) were gained significantly (P<0.003) from control (17,560), TP (18,586) and DSP (19,266 won) so which the monetary return was the highest in DSP and the differences was recognized between TP and DSP. Percentage over 1st grade appeared in control, TP and DSP were 55.4, 88.9 and 100.0%, respectively. These results supported the hypothesis that supplementation of emulsifier improve the marbling score and the carcass quality grade by increased digestibilities of the feed fat in Hanwoo steers in fattening period.

• Proceedings of the Korea Society of Poultry Science Conference
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• 2003.07b
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• pp.67-88
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• 2003

The consumption of poultry meat (chicken and turkey) grew the most during the past few decades due to several contributing factors such as low price. product research and development. favorable meat characteristics, responsive to consumer needs, vertical integration and industry consolidation, new processing equipments and technology, and aggressive marketing. The major processing technologies developed and used in chicken processing include forming/restructuring, tumbling, curing, smoking, massaging, injection, marination, emulsifying, breading, battering, shredding, dicing, and individual quick freezing. These processing technologies were applied to various parts of chicken including whole carcass. Product developments using breast, thigh, and mechanically separated chicken meat greatly increased the utilization of poultry meat. Chicken breast became the symbol of healthy food, which made chicken meat as the most frequent menu items in restaurants. However, the use of and product development for dark meat, which includes thigh, drum, and chicken wings were rather limited due to comparatively high fat content in dark meat. Majority of chicken are currently sold as further processed ready-to-cook or ready-to-eat forms. Major quality issues in chicken meat include pink color problems in uncured cooked breast, lipid oxidation and off-flavor, tenderness PSE breast, and food safety. Research and development to ensure the safety and quality of raw and cooked chicken meat using new processing technologies will be the major issues in the future as they are now. Especially, the application of irradiation in raw and cooked chicken meat products will be increased dramatically within next 5 years. The market share of ready-to-eat cooked meat products will be increased. More portion controlled finished products, dark meat products, and organic and ethnic products with various packaging approaches will also be introduced.

• Food Science and Preservation
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.783-791
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• 2012

The purpose of the study was to provide baseline information that could encourage consumers and establish the direction of development for sprouts and leafy vegetables. A survey on the consumption and preference for sprouts and leafy vegetables of 823 people over 20 years of age in Seoul and Gyeonggi province was conducted. The preference for sprouts was higher in men ($3.75{\pm}0.96$) than in women ($3.64{\pm}0.84$), whereas the preference for leafy vegetables was higher in women ($4.06{\pm}0.74$) than in men ($3.88{\pm}0.90$). Based on age, the respondents in their 40s or above had high preferences for sprouts and leaf vegetables due to the importance that they accorded to health and nutrition (p<0.01). The sprouts and leafy vegetables were purchased mainly for their high nutritional value. The purchase frequency of once a month or more for leafy vegetables (82.7%) was higher than that for sprouts (57.1%). The consumers purchased sprouts and leafy vegetables mainly from a large discount store. The respondents in their 20s showed the highest percentage of purchasing from a local store whereas the older ones showed a high preference for traditional markets. The reason for the choice of the place of purchase was convenience. The freshness and price were important factors in the consumption of sprouts and leafy vegetables. In the case of leafy vegetables, the consumers preferred to buy them using the conventional weight measurement system rather than in small packages. On the other hand, mixed small packages were preferred for sprouts. The purchase frequency was correlated with the preferences, need for improvement and purchase intent for sprouts and leafy vegetables. The aspects that require improvement for producing high-quality sprouts and leafy vegetables were the nutritional and functional properties. To increase the consumption of sprouts and leafy vegetables, there is need for variations and improvement of the quality and safety of the products.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.135-140
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• 2014

Pre-storage ultra-violet (UV) light treatment on fresh produce is known to inactivate the contaminated microorganisms, activate the defense system, and delay ripening extending the shelf life. As UV light emitting diode (LED) becomes available at a relatively low price, continuous or intermittent UV treatment during chilled storage is possible in a container or package. This study attempted an in situ UV LED treatment on fresh produce stored under a refrigerated container in order to see its potential in the fresh produce storage and further optimize its application conditions. The effect of in-container UV LED irradiation on the quality preservation of shredded carrots was investigated in the air and modified atmosphere (MA) conditions. Two sets of experiment with Escherichia coli inoculation and with natural microbial flora in the air (two 30 minute on-off cycles of 1 $diode/dm^2$ per day at a location above 2 cm) showed a clear and significant effect of the UV LED irradiation on the suppression of microbial growth: 280 nm was the most effective by maintaining a lower microbial count by at least 0.5 log (CFU/g) throughout the 6 day storage period. The carotenoids content of shredded carrots subjected to UV LED treatment at 365 and 405 nm in the air was higher than that of the control shredded carrots. In MA condition of $O_2$ of 1.2~4.3% and $CO_2$ of 8.4~10.6% being indifferent with LED wavelengths, 280 nm UV LED irradiation was also effective in inhibiting the microbial growth. While there was no observed difference in the carotenoids content between untreated and UV LED-treated shredded carrots in MA, UV LED irradiation at 365 and 405 nm was slightly better in DPPH radical scavenging activity. The use of UV LED in storage container or package seems to give the benefits of preserving the microbial and nutritional qualities of minimally processed fruits and vegetables.