• Title/Summary/Keyword: structure prediction

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Prediction of Distribution Changes of Carpinus laxiflora and C. tschonoskii Based on Climate Change Scenarios Using MaxEnt Model (MaxEnt 모델링을 이용한 기후변화 시나리오에 따른 서어나무 (Carpinus laxiflora)와 개서어나무 (C. tschonoskii)의 분포변화 예측)

  • Lee, Min-Ki;Chun, Jung-Hwa;Lee, Chang-Bae
    • Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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    • v.23 no.1
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    • pp.55-67
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    • 2021
  • Hornbeams (Carpinus spp.), which are widely distributed in South Korea, are recognized as one of the most abundant species at climax stage in the temperate forests. Although the distribution and vegetation structure of the C. laxiflora community have been reported, little ecological information of C. tschonoskii is available. Little effort was made to examine the distribution shift of these species under the future climate conditions. This study was conducted to predict potential shifts in the distribution of C. laxiflora and C. tschonoskii in 2050s and 2090s under the two sets of climate change scenarios, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. The MaxEnt model was used to predict the spatial distribution of two species using the occurrence data derived from the 6th National Forest Inventory data as well as climate and topography data. It was found that the main factors for the distribution of C. laxiflora were elevation, temperature seasonality, and mean annual precipitation. The distribution of C. tschonoskii, was influenced by temperature seasonality, mean annual precipitation, and mean diurnal rang. It was projected that the total habitat area of the C. laxiflora could increase by 1.05% and 1.11% under RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 scenarios, respectively. It was also predicted that the distributional area of C. tschonoskii could expand under the future climate conditions. These results highlighted that the climate change would have considerable impact on the spatial distribution of C. laxiflora and C. tschonoskii. These also suggested that ecological information derived from climate change impact assessment study can be used to develop proper forest management practices in response to climate change.

A Study of Life Safety Index Model based on AHP and Utilization of Service (AHP 기반의 생활안전지수 모델 및 서비스 활용방안 연구)

  • Oh, Hye-Su;Lee, Dong-Hoon;Jeong, Jong-Woon;Jang, Jae-Min;Yang, Sang-Woon
    • Journal of the Society of Disaster Information
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    • v.17 no.4
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    • pp.864-881
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    • 2021
  • Purpose: This study aims is to provide a total care solution preventing disaster based on Big Data and AI technology and to service safety considered by individual situations and various risk characteristics. The purpose is to suggest a method that customized comprehensive index services to prevent and respond to safety accidents for calculating the living safety index that quantitatively represent individual safety levels in relation to daily life safety. Method: In this study, we use method of mixing AHP(Analysis Hierarchy Process) and Likert Scale that extracted from consensus formation model of the expert group. We organize evaluation items that can evaluate life safety prevention services into risk indicators, vulnerability indicators, and prevention indicators. And We made up AHP hierarchical structure according to the AHP decision methodology and proposed a method to calculate relative weights between evaluation criteria through pairwise comparison of each level item. In addition, in consideration of the expansion of life safety prevention services in the future, the Likert scale is used instead of the AHP pair comparison and the weights between individual services are calculated. Result: We obtain result that is weights for life safety prevention services and reflected them in the individual risk index calculated through the artificial intelligence prediction model of life safety prevention services, so the comprehensive index was calculated. Conclusion: In order to apply the implemented model, a test environment consisting of a life safety prevention service app and platform was built, and the efficacy of the function was evaluated based on the user scenario. Through this, the life safety index presented in this study was confirmed to support the golden time for diagnosis, response and prevention of safety risks by comprehensively indication the user's current safety level.

Structural Evaluation Method to Determination Safe Working Load of Block Handling Lugs (블록 이동용 러그의 안전사용하중 결정에 관한 구조 평가법)

  • O-Hyun Kwon;Joo-Shin Park;Jung-Kwan Seo
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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    • v.29 no.4
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    • pp.363-371
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    • 2023
  • To construct a ship, blocks of various sizes must be moved and erected . In this process, lugs are used such that they match the block fastening method and various functions suitable for the characteristics of each shipyard facility. The sizes and shapes of the lugs vary depending on the weight and shape of the block structures. The structure is reinforced by welding the doubling pads to compensate for insufficient rigidity around the holes where the shackle is fastened. As for the method of designing lugs according to lifting loading conditions, a simple calculation based on the beam theory and structural analysis using numerical modeling are performed. In the case of the analytical method, a standardized evaluation method must be established because results may differ depending on the type of element and modeling method. The application of this ambiguous methodology may cause serious safety problems during the process of moving and turning-over blocks. In this study , the effects of various parameters are compared and analyzed through numerical structural analysis to determine the modeling conditions and evaluation method that can evaluate the actual structural response of the lug. The modeling technique that represents the plate part and weld bead around the lug hole provides the most realistic behavior results. The modeling results with the same conditions as those of the actual lug where only the weld bead is connected to the main body of the lug, showed a lower ulimated strength compared with the results obtained by applying the MPC load. The two-dimensional shell element is applied to reduce the modeling and analysis time, and a safety working load was verified to be predicted by reducing the thickness of the doubling pad by 85%. The results of the effects of various parameters reviewed in the study are expected to be used as good reference data for the lug design and safe working load prediction.

Study on Tourism Demand Forecast and Influencing Factors in Busan Metropolitan City (부산 연안도시 관광수요 예측과 영향요인에 관한 연구)

  • Kyu Won Hwang;Sung Mo Nam;Ah Reum Jang;Moon Suk Lee
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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    • v.29 no.7
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    • pp.915-929
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    • 2023
  • Improvements in people's quality of life, diversification of leisure activities, and changes in population structure have led to an increase in the demand for tourism and an expansion of the diversification of tourism activities. In particular, for coastal cities where land and marine tourism elements coexist, various factors influence their tourism demands. Tourism requires the construction of infrastructure and content development according to the demand at the tourist destination. This study aims to improve the prediction accuracy and explore influencing factors through time series analysis of tourism scale using agent-based data. Basic local governments in the Busan area were examined, and the data used were the number of tourists and the amount of tourism consumption on a monthly basis. The univariate time series analysis, which is a deterministic model, was used along with the SARIMAX analysis to identify the influencing factor. The tourism consumption propensity, focusing on the consumption amount according to business types and the amount of mentions on SNS, was set as the influencing factor. The difference in accuracy (RMSE standard) between the time series models that did and did not consider COVID-19 was found to be very wide, ranging from 1.8 times to 32.7 times by region. Additionally, considering the influencing factor, the tourism consumption business type and SNS trends were found to significantly impact the number of tourists and the amount of tourism consumption. Therefore, to predict future demand, external influences as well as the tourists' consumption tendencies and interests in terms of local tourism must be considered. This study aimed to predict future tourism demand in a coastal city such as Busan and identify factors affecting tourism scale, thereby contributing to policy decision-making to prepare tourism demand in consideration of government tourism policies and tourism trends.

Multi-Variate Tabular Data Processing and Visualization Scheme for Machine Learning based Analysis: A Case Study using Titanic Dataset (기계 학습 기반 분석을 위한 다변량 정형 데이터 처리 및 시각화 방법: Titanic 데이터셋 적용 사례 연구)

  • Juhyoung Sung;Kiwon Kwon;Kyoungwon Park;Byoungchul Song
    • Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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    • v.25 no.4
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    • pp.121-130
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    • 2024
  • As internet and communication technology (ICT) is improved exponentially, types and amount of available data also increase. Even though data analysis including statistics is significant to utilize this large amount of data, there are inevitable limits to process various and complex data in general way. Meanwhile, there are many attempts to apply machine learning (ML) in various fields to solve the problems according to the enhancement in computational performance and increase in demands for autonomous systems. Especially, data processing for the model input and designing the model to solve the objective function are critical to achieve the model performance. Data processing methods according to the type and property have been presented through many studies and the performance of ML highly varies depending on the methods. Nevertheless, there are difficulties in deciding which data processing method for data analysis since the types and characteristics of data have become more diverse. Specifically, multi-variate data processing is essential for solving non-linear problem based on ML. In this paper, we present a multi-variate tabular data processing scheme for ML-aided data analysis by using Titanic dataset from Kaggle including various kinds of data. We present the methods like input variable filtering applying statistical analysis and normalization according to the data property. In addition, we analyze the data structure using visualization. Lastly, we design an ML model and train the model by applying the proposed multi-variate data process. After that, we analyze the passenger's survival prediction performance of the trained model. We expect that the proposed multi-variate data processing and visualization can be extended to various environments for ML based analysis.

A Study on Intelligent Value Chain Network System based on Firms' Information (기업정보 기반 지능형 밸류체인 네트워크 시스템에 관한 연구)

  • Sung, Tae-Eung;Kim, Kang-Hoe;Moon, Young-Su;Lee, Ho-Shin
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.24 no.3
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    • pp.67-88
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    • 2018
  • Until recently, as we recognize the significance of sustainable growth and competitiveness of small-and-medium sized enterprises (SMEs), governmental support for tangible resources such as R&D, manpower, funds, etc. has been mainly provided. However, it is also true that the inefficiency of support systems such as underestimated or redundant support has been raised because there exist conflicting policies in terms of appropriateness, effectiveness and efficiency of business support. From the perspective of the government or a company, we believe that due to limited resources of SMEs technology development and capacity enhancement through collaboration with external sources is the basis for creating competitive advantage for companies, and also emphasize value creation activities for it. This is why value chain network analysis is necessary in order to analyze inter-company deal relationships from a series of value chains and visualize results through establishing knowledge ecosystems at the corporate level. There exist Technology Opportunity Discovery (TOD) system that provides information on relevant products or technology status of companies with patents through retrievals over patent, product, or company name, CRETOP and KISLINE which both allow to view company (financial) information and credit information, but there exists no online system that provides a list of similar (competitive) companies based on the analysis of value chain network or information on potential clients or demanders that can have business deals in future. Therefore, we focus on the "Value Chain Network System (VCNS)", a support partner for planning the corporate business strategy developed and managed by KISTI, and investigate the types of embedded network-based analysis modules, databases (D/Bs) to support them, and how to utilize the system efficiently. Further we explore the function of network visualization in intelligent value chain analysis system which becomes the core information to understand industrial structure ystem and to develop a company's new product development. In order for a company to have the competitive superiority over other companies, it is necessary to identify who are the competitors with patents or products currently being produced, and searching for similar companies or competitors by each type of industry is the key to securing competitiveness in the commercialization of the target company. In addition, transaction information, which becomes business activity between companies, plays an important role in providing information regarding potential customers when both parties enter similar fields together. Identifying a competitor at the enterprise or industry level by using a network map based on such inter-company sales information can be implemented as a core module of value chain analysis. The Value Chain Network System (VCNS) combines the concepts of value chain and industrial structure analysis with corporate information simply collected to date, so that it can grasp not only the market competition situation of individual companies but also the value chain relationship of a specific industry. Especially, it can be useful as an information analysis tool at the corporate level such as identification of industry structure, identification of competitor trends, analysis of competitors, locating suppliers (sellers) and demanders (buyers), industry trends by item, finding promising items, finding new entrants, finding core companies and items by value chain, and recognizing the patents with corresponding companies, etc. In addition, based on the objectivity and reliability of the analysis results from transaction deals information and financial data, it is expected that value chain network system will be utilized for various purposes such as information support for business evaluation, R&D decision support and mid-term or short-term demand forecasting, in particular to more than 15,000 member companies in Korea, employees in R&D service sectors government-funded research institutes and public organizations. In order to strengthen business competitiveness of companies, technology, patent and market information have been provided so far mainly by government agencies and private research-and-development service companies. This service has been presented in frames of patent analysis (mainly for rating, quantitative analysis) or market analysis (for market prediction and demand forecasting based on market reports). However, there was a limitation to solving the lack of information, which is one of the difficulties that firms in Korea often face in the stage of commercialization. In particular, it is much more difficult to obtain information about competitors and potential candidates. In this study, the real-time value chain analysis and visualization service module based on the proposed network map and the data in hands is compared with the expected market share, estimated sales volume, contact information (which implies potential suppliers for raw material / parts, and potential demanders for complete products / modules). In future research, we intend to carry out the in-depth research for further investigating the indices of competitive factors through participation of research subjects and newly developing competitive indices for competitors or substitute items, and to additively promoting with data mining techniques and algorithms for improving the performance of VCNS.

Visualizing the Results of Opinion Mining from Social Media Contents: Case Study of a Noodle Company (소셜미디어 콘텐츠의 오피니언 마이닝결과 시각화: N라면 사례 분석 연구)

  • Kim, Yoosin;Kwon, Do Young;Jeong, Seung Ryul
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.20 no.4
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    • pp.89-105
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    • 2014
  • After emergence of Internet, social media with highly interactive Web 2.0 applications has provided very user friendly means for consumers and companies to communicate with each other. Users have routinely published contents involving their opinions and interests in social media such as blogs, forums, chatting rooms, and discussion boards, and the contents are released real-time in the Internet. For that reason, many researchers and marketers regard social media contents as the source of information for business analytics to develop business insights, and many studies have reported results on mining business intelligence from Social media content. In particular, opinion mining and sentiment analysis, as a technique to extract, classify, understand, and assess the opinions implicit in text contents, are frequently applied into social media content analysis because it emphasizes determining sentiment polarity and extracting authors' opinions. A number of frameworks, methods, techniques and tools have been presented by these researchers. However, we have found some weaknesses from their methods which are often technically complicated and are not sufficiently user-friendly for helping business decisions and planning. In this study, we attempted to formulate a more comprehensive and practical approach to conduct opinion mining with visual deliverables. First, we described the entire cycle of practical opinion mining using Social media content from the initial data gathering stage to the final presentation session. Our proposed approach to opinion mining consists of four phases: collecting, qualifying, analyzing, and visualizing. In the first phase, analysts have to choose target social media. Each target media requires different ways for analysts to gain access. There are open-API, searching tools, DB2DB interface, purchasing contents, and so son. Second phase is pre-processing to generate useful materials for meaningful analysis. If we do not remove garbage data, results of social media analysis will not provide meaningful and useful business insights. To clean social media data, natural language processing techniques should be applied. The next step is the opinion mining phase where the cleansed social media content set is to be analyzed. The qualified data set includes not only user-generated contents but also content identification information such as creation date, author name, user id, content id, hit counts, review or reply, favorite, etc. Depending on the purpose of the analysis, researchers or data analysts can select a suitable mining tool. Topic extraction and buzz analysis are usually related to market trends analysis, while sentiment analysis is utilized to conduct reputation analysis. There are also various applications, such as stock prediction, product recommendation, sales forecasting, and so on. The last phase is visualization and presentation of analysis results. The major focus and purpose of this phase are to explain results of analysis and help users to comprehend its meaning. Therefore, to the extent possible, deliverables from this phase should be made simple, clear and easy to understand, rather than complex and flashy. To illustrate our approach, we conducted a case study on a leading Korean instant noodle company. We targeted the leading company, NS Food, with 66.5% of market share; the firm has kept No. 1 position in the Korean "Ramen" business for several decades. We collected a total of 11,869 pieces of contents including blogs, forum contents and news articles. After collecting social media content data, we generated instant noodle business specific language resources for data manipulation and analysis using natural language processing. In addition, we tried to classify contents in more detail categories such as marketing features, environment, reputation, etc. In those phase, we used free ware software programs such as TM, KoNLP, ggplot2 and plyr packages in R project. As the result, we presented several useful visualization outputs like domain specific lexicons, volume and sentiment graphs, topic word cloud, heat maps, valence tree map, and other visualized images to provide vivid, full-colored examples using open library software packages of the R project. Business actors can quickly detect areas by a swift glance that are weak, strong, positive, negative, quiet or loud. Heat map is able to explain movement of sentiment or volume in categories and time matrix which shows density of color on time periods. Valence tree map, one of the most comprehensive and holistic visualization models, should be very helpful for analysts and decision makers to quickly understand the "big picture" business situation with a hierarchical structure since tree-map can present buzz volume and sentiment with a visualized result in a certain period. This case study offers real-world business insights from market sensing which would demonstrate to practical-minded business users how they can use these types of results for timely decision making in response to on-going changes in the market. We believe our approach can provide practical and reliable guide to opinion mining with visualized results that are immediately useful, not just in food industry but in other industries as well.

Business Application of Convolutional Neural Networks for Apparel Classification Using Runway Image (합성곱 신경망의 비지니스 응용: 런웨이 이미지를 사용한 의류 분류를 중심으로)

  • Seo, Yian;Shin, Kyung-shik
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.24 no.3
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    • pp.1-19
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    • 2018
  • Large amount of data is now available for research and business sectors to extract knowledge from it. This data can be in the form of unstructured data such as audio, text, and image data and can be analyzed by deep learning methodology. Deep learning is now widely used for various estimation, classification, and prediction problems. Especially, fashion business adopts deep learning techniques for apparel recognition, apparel search and retrieval engine, and automatic product recommendation. The core model of these applications is the image classification using Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN). CNN is made up of neurons which learn parameters such as weights while inputs come through and reach outputs. CNN has layer structure which is best suited for image classification as it is comprised of convolutional layer for generating feature maps, pooling layer for reducing the dimensionality of feature maps, and fully-connected layer for classifying the extracted features. However, most of the classification models have been trained using online product image, which is taken under controlled situation such as apparel image itself or professional model wearing apparel. This image may not be an effective way to train the classification model considering the situation when one might want to classify street fashion image or walking image, which is taken in uncontrolled situation and involves people's movement and unexpected pose. Therefore, we propose to train the model with runway apparel image dataset which captures mobility. This will allow the classification model to be trained with far more variable data and enhance the adaptation with diverse query image. To achieve both convergence and generalization of the model, we apply Transfer Learning on our training network. As Transfer Learning in CNN is composed of pre-training and fine-tuning stages, we divide the training step into two. First, we pre-train our architecture with large-scale dataset, ImageNet dataset, which consists of 1.2 million images with 1000 categories including animals, plants, activities, materials, instrumentations, scenes, and foods. We use GoogLeNet for our main architecture as it has achieved great accuracy with efficiency in ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge (ILSVRC). Second, we fine-tune the network with our own runway image dataset. For the runway image dataset, we could not find any previously and publicly made dataset, so we collect the dataset from Google Image Search attaining 2426 images of 32 major fashion brands including Anna Molinari, Balenciaga, Balmain, Brioni, Burberry, Celine, Chanel, Chloe, Christian Dior, Cividini, Dolce and Gabbana, Emilio Pucci, Ermenegildo, Fendi, Giuliana Teso, Gucci, Issey Miyake, Kenzo, Leonard, Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs, Marni, Max Mara, Missoni, Moschino, Ralph Lauren, Roberto Cavalli, Sonia Rykiel, Stella McCartney, Valentino, Versace, and Yve Saint Laurent. We perform 10-folded experiments to consider the random generation of training data, and our proposed model has achieved accuracy of 67.2% on final test. Our research suggests several advantages over previous related studies as to our best knowledge, there haven't been any previous studies which trained the network for apparel image classification based on runway image dataset. We suggest the idea of training model with image capturing all the possible postures, which is denoted as mobility, by using our own runway apparel image dataset. Moreover, by applying Transfer Learning and using checkpoint and parameters provided by Tensorflow Slim, we could save time spent on training the classification model as taking 6 minutes per experiment to train the classifier. This model can be used in many business applications where the query image can be runway image, product image, or street fashion image. To be specific, runway query image can be used for mobile application service during fashion week to facilitate brand search, street style query image can be classified during fashion editorial task to classify and label the brand or style, and website query image can be processed by e-commerce multi-complex service providing item information or recommending similar item.

A Study on Recent Research Trend in Management of Technology Using Keywords Network Analysis (키워드 네트워크 분석을 통해 살펴본 기술경영의 최근 연구동향)

  • Kho, Jaechang;Cho, Kuentae;Cho, Yoonho
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.19 no.2
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    • pp.101-123
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    • 2013
  • Recently due to the advancements of science and information technology, the socio-economic business areas are changing from the industrial economy to a knowledge economy. Furthermore, companies need to do creation of new value through continuous innovation, development of core competencies and technologies, and technological convergence. Therefore, the identification of major trends in technology research and the interdisciplinary knowledge-based prediction of integrated technologies and promising techniques are required for firms to gain and sustain competitive advantage and future growth engines. The aim of this paper is to understand the recent research trend in management of technology (MOT) and to foresee promising technologies with deep knowledge for both technology and business. Furthermore, this study intends to give a clear way to find new technical value for constant innovation and to capture core technology and technology convergence. Bibliometrics is a metrical analysis to understand literature's characteristics. Traditional bibliometrics has its limitation not to understand relationship between trend in technology management and technology itself, since it focuses on quantitative indices such as quotation frequency. To overcome this issue, the network focused bibliometrics has been used instead of traditional one. The network focused bibliometrics mainly uses "Co-citation" and "Co-word" analysis. In this study, a keywords network analysis, one of social network analysis, is performed to analyze recent research trend in MOT. For the analysis, we collected keywords from research papers published in international journals related MOT between 2002 and 2011, constructed a keyword network, and then conducted the keywords network analysis. Over the past 40 years, the studies in social network have attempted to understand the social interactions through the network structure represented by connection patterns. In other words, social network analysis has been used to explain the structures and behaviors of various social formations such as teams, organizations, and industries. In general, the social network analysis uses data as a form of matrix. In our context, the matrix depicts the relations between rows as papers and columns as keywords, where the relations are represented as binary. Even though there are no direct relations between papers who have been published, the relations between papers can be derived artificially as in the paper-keyword matrix, in which each cell has 1 for including or 0 for not including. For example, a keywords network can be configured in a way to connect the papers which have included one or more same keywords. After constructing a keywords network, we analyzed frequency of keywords, structural characteristics of keywords network, preferential attachment and growth of new keywords, component, and centrality. The results of this study are as follows. First, a paper has 4.574 keywords on the average. 90% of keywords were used three or less times for past 10 years and about 75% of keywords appeared only one time. Second, the keyword network in MOT is a small world network and a scale free network in which a small number of keywords have a tendency to become a monopoly. Third, the gap between the rich (with more edges) and the poor (with fewer edges) in the network is getting bigger as time goes on. Fourth, most of newly entering keywords become poor nodes within about 2~3 years. Finally, keywords with high degree centrality, betweenness centrality, and closeness centrality are "Innovation," "R&D," "Patent," "Forecast," "Technology transfer," "Technology," and "SME". The results of analysis will help researchers identify major trends in MOT research and then seek a new research topic. We hope that the result of the analysis will help researchers of MOT identify major trends in technology research, and utilize as useful reference information when they seek consilience with other fields of study and select a new research topic.

A Study on Interactions of Competitive Promotions Between the New and Used Cars (신차와 중고차간 프로모션의 상호작용에 대한 연구)

  • Chang, Kwangpil
    • Asia Marketing Journal
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    • v.14 no.1
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    • pp.83-98
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    • 2012
  • In a market where new and used cars are competing with each other, we would run the risk of obtaining biased estimates of cross elasticity between them if we focus on only new cars or on only used cars. Unfortunately, most of previous studies on the automobile industry have focused on only new car models without taking into account the effect of used cars' pricing policy on new cars' market shares and vice versa, resulting in inadequate prediction of reactive pricing in response to competitors' rebate or price discount. However, there are some exceptions. Purohit (1992) and Sullivan (1990) looked into both new and used car markets at the same time to examine the effect of new car model launching on the used car prices. But their studies have some limitations in that they employed the average used car prices reported in NADA Used Car Guide instead of actual transaction prices. Some of the conflicting results may be due to this problem in the data. Park (1998) recognized this problem and used the actual prices in his study. His work is notable in that he investigated the qualitative effect of new car model launching on the pricing policy of the used car in terms of reinforcement of brand equity. The current work also used the actual price like Park (1998) but the quantitative aspect of competitive price promotion between new and used cars of the same model was explored. In this study, I develop a model that assumes that the cross elasticity between new and used cars of the same model is higher than those amongst new cars and used cars of the different model. Specifically, I apply the nested logit model that assumes the car model choice at the first stage and the choice between new and used cars at the second stage. This proposed model is compared to the IIA (Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives) model that assumes that there is no decision hierarchy but that new and used cars of the different model are all substitutable at the first stage. The data for this study are drawn from Power Information Network (PIN), an affiliate of J.D. Power and Associates. PIN collects sales transaction data from a sample of dealerships in the major metropolitan areas in the U.S. These are retail transactions, i.e., sales or leases to final consumers, excluding fleet sales and including both new car and used car sales. Each observation in the PIN database contains the transaction date, the manufacturer, model year, make, model, trim and other car information, the transaction price, consumer rebates, the interest rate, term, amount financed (when the vehicle is financed or leased), etc. I used data for the compact cars sold during the period January 2009- June 2009. The new and used cars of the top nine selling models are included in the study: Mazda 3, Honda Civic, Chevrolet Cobalt, Toyota Corolla, Hyundai Elantra, Ford Focus, Volkswagen Jetta, Nissan Sentra, and Kia Spectra. These models in the study accounted for 87% of category unit sales. Empirical application of the nested logit model showed that the proposed model outperformed the IIA (Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives) model in both calibration and holdout samples. The other comparison model that assumes choice between new and used cars at the first stage and car model choice at the second stage turned out to be mis-specfied since the dissimilarity parameter (i.e., inclusive or categroy value parameter) was estimated to be greater than 1. Post hoc analysis based on estimated parameters was conducted employing the modified Lanczo's iterative method. This method is intuitively appealing. For example, suppose a new car offers a certain amount of rebate and gains market share at first. In response to this rebate, a used car of the same model keeps decreasing price until it regains the lost market share to maintain the status quo. The new car settle down to a lowered market share due to the used car's reaction. The method enables us to find the amount of price discount to main the status quo and equilibrium market shares of the new and used cars. In the first simulation, I used Jetta as a focal brand to see how its new and used cars set prices, rebates or APR interactively assuming that reactive cars respond to price promotion to maintain the status quo. The simulation results showed that the IIA model underestimates cross elasticities, resulting in suggesting less aggressive used car price discount in response to new cars' rebate than the proposed nested logit model. In the second simulation, I used Elantra to reconfirm the result for Jetta and came to the same conclusion. In the third simulation, I had Corolla offer $1,000 rebate to see what could be the best response for Elantra's new and used cars. Interestingly, Elantra's used car could maintain the status quo by offering lower price discount ($160) than the new car ($205). In the future research, we might want to explore the plausibility of the alternative nested logit model. For example, the NUB model that assumes choice between new and used cars at the first stage and brand choice at the second stage could be a possibility even though it was rejected in the current study because of mis-specification (A dissimilarity parameter turned out to be higher than 1). The NUB model may have been rejected due to true mis-specification or data structure transmitted from a typical car dealership. In a typical car dealership, both new and used cars of the same model are displayed. Because of this fact, the BNU model that assumes brand choice at the first stage and choice between new and used cars at the second stage may have been favored in the current study since customers first choose a dealership (brand) then choose between new and used cars given this market environment. However, suppose there are dealerships that carry both new and used cars of various models, then the NUB model might fit the data as well as the BNU model. Which model is a better description of the data is an empirical question. In addition, it would be interesting to test a probabilistic mixture model of the BNU and NUB on a new data set.

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