Examination of the Current Situations of Security Dogs and it's Development Plans (경호탐지견의 운용실태 및 발전방안)
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- Korean Security Journal
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- no.14
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- pp.215-234
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- 2007
Our country security industry 1960's service expense of the beginning U.S. army unit it accomplishes the growth which is quick with start, currently about 2,500 triumph the security enterprises which it goes over are being active. But the majority in these enterprise about lower cotton can a forever characteristic with pressure and the manpower civil official ability insufficient back of faithlessness management and capital power. To sleep with afterwords it presents the security dogs deployment plan for an efficient security together from the research which it sees hereupon and it does. First, it cultivates the domestic mountain progress dog which is a breed which is suitable with the security dogs and the shovel flesh dog back with the security dogs. Specially the Jindo of the breed which is excellent training which is suitable in task of the security dogs it leads and if it uses appropriately, it industrializes our specific the Jindo and protection there is a possibility of getting the effect which falls to also the gist which it rears rightly. It cultivate the second, security dogs and it magnifies training. The security dogs consequently is it will be able to accomplish the task above 2 branches to training method. Namely, after finishing obedience training, it is to be in security activity it will execute guard or detection back special training which is suitable in task and it will be able to commit. Third, it uses the security dogs which is trained rightly in task. The security dogs the adult escorts, facility expense, the explosive and narcotic drug detection, it will be able to use with the other blind man guidance dogs back. The narcotic drug detection dogs which currently is used specially technique intelligence anger, when considering the tendency of the narcotic drug smuggling offense field which becomes diversification that the role very it is important is a possibility of saying at day. It cultivate a fourth, escort relation specialty manpower and it improves the breed of the security dogs. The hazard which cultivate the security dogs use necessary personnel the breed of security dogs, the security dogs training center it opens the security crane relation subject of the college which stands and (university) it improves it establishes and training which is suitable in task it is to do to execute letting in the training map company. Specially, the hazard which improves the breed of security dogs in the progress mind quality which stands against the portion where the breed improvement is demanded as the portion where the internal organs research and investment are necessary sees. The security dogs compares in labor cost and the expense holds few, if it uses the our specific domestic dogs it will be able to use efficiently in the task which is various it solves the multi branch plans for wisly with the security dogs industrial development security of course contemporary history sliced raw fish sees demands compared to being immediacy and the life which is happy business the place where it does it sees it will be able to contribute a lot as.
An important business-field of world-wide steel-industry is the coating of thin metal-sheets with zinc, zinc-aluminum and aluminum based materials. These products mostly go into automotive industry. in particular for the car-body. into building and construction industry as well as household appliances. Due to mass-production, the processing is done in large continuously operating plants where the mostly cold-rolled metal-strip as the substrate is handled in coils up to 40 tons unwind before and rolled up again after passing the processing plant which includes cleaning, annealing, hot-dip galvanizing / aluminizing and chemical treatment. In the liquid Zn, Zn-AI, AI-Zn and AI-Si bathes a combined action of corrosion and wear under high temperature and high stress onto the transfer components (rolls) accounts for major economic losses. Most critical here are the bearing systems of these rolls operating in the liquid system. Rolls in liquid system can not be avoided as they are needed to transfer the steel-strip into and out of the crucible. Since several years, ceramic roller bearings are tested here [1.2], however, in particular due to uncontrollable Slag-impurities within the hot bath [3], slide bearings are still expected to be of a higher potential [4]. The today's state of the art is the application of slide bearings based on Stellite\ulcorneragainst Stellite which is in general a 50-60 wt% Co-matrix with incorporated Cr- and W-carbides and other composites. Indeed Stellite is used as the bearing-material as of it's chemical properties (does not go into solution), the physical properties in particular with poor lubricating properties are not satisfying at all. To increase the Sliding behavior in the bearing system, about 0.15-0.2 wt% of lead has been added into the hot-bath in the past. Due to environmental regulations. this had to be reduced dramatically_ This together with the heavily increasing production rates expressed by increased velocity of the substrate-steel-band up to 200 m/min and increased tractate power up to 10 tons in modern plants. leads to life times of the bearings of a few up to several days only. To improve this situation. the Mechanical Alloying (MA) TeChnique [5.6.7.8] is used to prOduce advanced Stellite-based bearing materials. A lubricating phase is introduced into Stellite-powder-material by MA, the composite-powder-particles are coated by High Energy Milling (HEM) in order to produce bearing-bushes of approximately 12 kg by Sintering, Liquid Phase Sintering (LPS) and Hot Isostatic Pressing (HIP). The chemical and physical behavior of samples as well as the bearing systems in the hot galvanizing / aluminizing plant are discussed. DependenCies like lubricant material and composite, LPS-binder and composite, particle shape and PM-route with respect to achievable density. (temperature--) shock-reSistibility and corrosive-wear behavior will be described. The materials are characterized by particle size analysis (laser diffraction), scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction. corrosive-wear behavior is determined using a special cylinder-in-bush apparatus (CIBA) as well as field-test in real production condition. Part I of this work describes the initial testing phase where different sample materials are produced, characterized, consolidated and tested in the CIBA under a common AI-Zn-system. The results are discussed and the material-system for the large components to be produced for the field test in real production condition is decided. Outlook: Part II of this work will describe the field test in a hot-dip-galvanizing/aluminizing plant of the mechanically alloyed bearing bushes under aluminum-rich liquid metal. Alter testing, the bushes will be characterized and obtained results with respect to wear. expected lifetime, surface roughness and infiltration will be discussed. Part III of this project will describe a second initial testing phase where the won results of part 1+11 will be transferred to the AI-Si system. Part IV of this project will describe the field test in a hot-dip-aluminizing plant of the mechanically alloyed bearing bushes under aluminum liquid metal. After testing. the bushes will be characterized and obtained results with respect to wear. expected lifetime, surface roughness and infiltration will be discussed.
In a series of studies on the utilization of persimmons, the purpose of this experiment was to examine the optimum thickness of film using different number of persimmons per film bag. 'Fuyu', persimmon variety was used in this investigation. The results obtained were as follows: The optimum thickness of the film bag was 0.08mm, 0.06mm, and 0.04mm for the bags packed with 3, 10 and 50 persimnons, respectively. The changes in the ratio of firmness, loss of fresh weight, titrable acidity and percentage of sugar contents were minimal in these three optimum combinations than the others. These results could be explained by the balanced optimum gas concentration,
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between the performance factors of dance performance and the intention to revisit the audience, and to investigate the structural relationship between viewing satisfaction and viewing value. For data processing, SPSS Ver. 21.0 and AMOS Ver. The program of 21.0 was used. Structural relationships were analyzed using a two-step approach, and the significance of the effects was verified using bootstrapping. In addition, a full mediating effect and a partial mediating effect were presented using the three-step regression analysis mediating effect. The results of the study are as follows. First, it was found that the viewing factors influenced the viewing satisfaction and the viewing value. Second, it was found that viewing satisfaction had an intention to revisit and influenced the viewing value. It was also found that the viewing value had an effect on the intention to revisit. Third, in the relationship between the viewing factors of the dance performance and the viewing value, it was found that the viewing satisfaction had a partial mediating effect. Fourth, it was found that the attendance factor of the dance performance was not related to the intention to revisit. However, it was found that the satisfaction of viewing and the value of viewing had a complete mediating effect in relation to the viewing factors of dance performances and the intention to revisit. Through these studies, the dance performance should overcome the inherent limitations of space-time limitations and present basic data for establishing a mid- to long-term marketing strategy that can respond quickly.
This study investigated consumer intention to use a location-based mobile shopping service (LBMSS) that integrates cognitive and affective responses. Information relevancy was integrated into pleasure-arousal-dominance (PAD) emotional state model in the present study as a conceptual framework. The results of an online survey of 335 mobile phone users in the U.S. indicated the positive effects of arousal and information relevancy on pleasure. In addition, there was a significant relationship between pleasure and intention to use a LBMSS. However, the relationship between dominance and pleasure was not statistically significant. The results of the present study provides insight to retailers and marketers as to what factors they need to consider to implement location-based mobile shopping services to improve their business performance. Extended Abstract : Location aware technology has expanded the marketer's reach by reducing space and time between a consumer's receipt of advertising and purchase, offering real-time information and coupons to consumers in purchasing situations (Dickenger and Kleijnen, 2008; Malhotra and Malhotra, 2009). LBMSS increases the relevancy of SMS marketing by linking advertisements to a user's location (Bamba and Barnes, 2007; Malhotra and Malhotra, 2009). This study investigated consumer intention to use a location-based mobile shopping service (LBMSS) that integrates cognitive and affective response. The purpose of the study was to examine the relationship among information relevancy and affective variables and their effects on intention to use LBMSS. Thus, information relevancy was integrated into pleasure-arousal-dominance (PAD) model and generated the following hypotheses. Hypothesis 1. There will be a positive influence of arousal concerning LBMSS on pleasure in regard to LBMSS. Hypothesis 2. There will be a positive influence of dominance in LBMSS on pleasure in regard to LBMSS. Hypothesis 3. There will be a positive influence of information relevancy on pleasure in regard to LBMSS. Hypothesis 4. There will be a positive influence of pleasure about LBMSS on intention to use LBMSS. E-mail invitations were sent out to a randomly selected sample of three thousand consumers who are older than 18 years old and mobile phone owners, acquired from an independent marketing research company. An online survey technique was employed utilizing Dillman's (2000) online survey method and follow-ups. A total of 335 valid responses were used for the data analysis in the present study. Before the respondents answer any of the questions, they were told to read a document describing LBMSS. The document included definitions and examples of LBMSS provided by various service providers. After that, they were exposed to a scenario describing the participant as taking a saturday shopping trip to a mall and then receiving a short message from the mall. The short message included new product information and coupons for same day use at participating stores. They then completed a questionnaire containing various questions. To assess arousal, dominance, and pleasure, we adapted and modified scales used in the previous studies in the context of location-based mobile shopping service, each of the five items from Mehrabian and Russell (1974). A total of 15 items were measured on a seven-point bipolar scale. To measure information relevancy, four items were borrowed from Mason et al. (1995). Intention to use LBMSS was captured using two items developed by Blackwell, and Miniard (1995) and one items developed by the authors. Data analyses were conducted using SPSS 19.0 and LISREL 8.72. A total of usable 335 data were obtained after deleting the incomplete responses, which results in a response rate of 11.20%. A little over half of the respondents were male (53.9%) and approximately 60% of respondents were married (57.4%). The mean age of the sample was 29.44 years with a range from 19 to 60 years. In terms of the ethnicity there were European Americans (54.5%), Hispanic American (5.3%), African-American (3.6%), and Asian American (2.9%), respectively. The respondents were highly educated; close to 62.5% of participants in the study reported holding a college degree or its equivalent and 14.5% of the participants had graduate degree. The sample represents all income categories: less than $24,999 (10.8%), $25,000-$49,999 (28.34%), $50,000-$74,999 (13.8%), and $75,000 or more (10.23%). The respondents of the study indicated that they were employed in many occupations. Responses came from all 42 states in the U.S. To identify the dimensions of research constructs, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) using a varimax rotation was conducted. As indicated in table 1, these dimensions: arousal, dominance, relevancy, pleasure, and intention to use, suggested by the EFA, explained 82.29% of the total variance with factor loadings ranged from .74 to .89. As a next step, CFA was conducted to validate the dimensions that were identified from the exploratory factor analysis and to further refine the scale. Table 1 exhibits the results of measurement model analysis and revealed a chi-square of 202.13 with degree-of-freedom of 89 (p =.002), GFI of .93, AGFI = .89, CFI of .99, NFI of .98, which indicates of the evidence of a good model fit to the data (Bagozzi and Yi, 1998; Hair et al., 1998). As table 1 shows, reliability was estimated with Cronbach's alpha and composite reliability (CR) for all multi-item scales. All the values met evidence of satisfactory reliability in multi-item measure for alpha (>.91) and CR (>.80). In addition, we tested the convergent validity of the measure using average variance extracted (AVE) by following recommendations from Fornell and Larcker (1981). The AVE values for the model constructs ranged from .74 through .85, which are higher than the threshold suggested by Fornell and Larcker (1981). To examine discriminant validity of the measure, we again followed the recommendations from Fornell and Larcker (1981). The shared variances between constructs were smaller than the AVE of the research constructs and confirm discriminant validity of the measure. The causal model testing was conducted using LISREL 8.72 with a maximum-likelihood estimation method. Table 2 shows the results of the hypotheses testing. The results for the conceptual model revealed good overall fit for the proposed model. Chi-square was 342.00 (df = 92, p =.000), NFI was .97, NNFI was .97, GFI was .89, AGFI was .83, and RMSEA was .08. All paths in the proposed model received significant statistical support except H2. The paths from arousal to pleasure (H1:
Background : The p53 gene codes for a DNA-binding nuclear phosphoprotein that appears to inhibit the progression of cells from the G1 to the S phase of the cell cycle. Mutations of the p53 gene are common in a wide variety of human cancers, including lung cancer. In lung cancers, point mutations of the p53 gene have been found in all histological types including approximately 45% of resected NSCLC and even more frequently in SCLC specimens. Mutant forms of the p53 protein have transforming activity and interfere with the cell-cycle regulatory function of the wild-type protein. The majority of p53 gene mutations produce proteins with altered conformation and prolonged half life; these mutant proteins accumulate in the cell nucleus and can be detected by immunohistochemical staining. But protein overexpression has been reported in the absence of mutation. p53 protein overexpression or gene mutation is reported poor prognostic factor in breast cancer, but in lung cancer, its prognostic significance is controversial. Method : We investigated the p53 abnormalities by nucleotide sequencing, polymerase chain reaction-single strand conformation polymorphism(PCR-SSCP), and immunohistochemical staining. We correlated these results with each other and survival in 75 patients with NSCLC resected with curative intent. Overexpression of the p53 protein was studied immunohistochemically in archival paraffin- embedded tumor samples using the D07(Novocastra, U.K.) antibody. Overexpression of p53 protein was defined by the nuclear staining of greater than 25% immunopositive cells in tumors. Detection of p53 gene mutation was done by PCR-SSCP and nucleotide sequencing from the exon 5-9 of p53 gene. Result: 1) Of the 75 patients, 36%(27/75) showed p53 overexpression by immunohistochemical stain. There was no survival difference between positive and negative p53 immunostaining(overall median survival of 26 months, disease free median survival of 13 months in both groups). 2) By PCR-SSCP, 27.6%(16/58) of the patients showed mobility shift. There was no significant difference in survival according to mobility shift(overall median survival of 27 in patients without mobility shift vs 20 months in patients with mobility shift, disease free median survival of 8 months vs 10 months respectively). 3) Nucleotide sequence was analysed from 29 patients, and 34.5%(10/29) had mutant p53 sequence. Patients with the presence of gene mutations showed tendency to shortened survival compared with the patients with no mutation(overall median survival of 22 vs 27 months, disease free median survival of 10 vs 20 months), but there was no statistical significance. 4) The sensitivity and specificity of immunostain based on PCR-SSCP was 67.0%, 74.0%, and that of the PCR-SSCP based on the nucleotide sequencing was 91.8%, 96.2% respectively. The concordance rate between the immunostain and PCR-SSCP was 62.5%, and the rate between the PCR-SSCP and nucleotide sequencing was 95.3%. Conclusion : In terms of detection of p53 gene mutation, PCR-SSCP was superior to immunostaining. p53 gene abnormalities either overexpression or mutation were not a significant prognostic factor in NSCLC patients resected with curative intent. However, patients with the mutated p53 gene showed the trends of early relapse.
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.
This paper describes a collaborative project between academia and industry which focused on improving the marketing and product development strategies for two private label apparel brands of a large regional department store chain in the southeastern United States. The goal of the project was to revitalize product lines of the two brands by incorporating student ideas for new solutions, thereby giving the students practical experience with a real-life industry situation. There were a number of key players involved in the project. A privately-owned department store chain based in the southeastern United States which was seeking an academic partner had recognized a need to update two existing private label brands. They targeted middle-aged consumers looking for casual, moderately priced merchandise. The company was seeking to change direction with both packaging and presentation, and possibly product design. The branding and product development divisions of the company contacted professors in an academic department of a large southeastern state university. Two of the professors agreed that the task would be a good fit for their classes - one was a junior-level Intermediate Brand Management class; the other was a senior-level Fashion Product Development class. The professors felt that by working collaboratively on the project, students would be exposed to a real world scenario, within the security of an academic learning environment. Collaboration within an interdisciplinary team has the advantage of providing experiences and resources beyond the capabilities of a single student and adds "brainpower" to problem-solving processes (Lowman 2000). This goal of improving the capabilities of students directed the instructors in each class to form interdisciplinary teams between the Branding and Product Development classes. In addition, many universities are employing industry partnerships in research and teaching, where collaboration within temporal (semester) and physical (classroom/lab) constraints help to increase students' knowledge and experience of a real-world situation. At the University of Tennessee, the Center of Industrial Services and UT-Knoxville's College of Engineering worked with a company to develop design improvements in its U.S. operations. In this study, Because should be lower case b with a private label retail brand, Wickett, Gaskill and Damhorst's (1999) revised Retail Apparel Product Development Model was used by the product development and brand management teams. This framework was chosen because it addresses apparel product development from the concept to the retail stage. Two classes were involved in this project: a junior level Brand Management class and a senior level Fashion Product Development class. Seven teams were formed which included four students from Brand Management and two students from Product Development. The classes were taught the same semester, but not at the same time. At the beginning of the semester, each class was introduced to the industry partner and given the problem. Half the teams were assigned to the men's brand and half to the women's brand. The teams were responsible for devising approaches to the problem, formulating a timeline for their work, staying in touch with industry representatives and making sure that each member of the team contributed in a positive way. The objective for the teams was to plan, develop, and present a product line using merchandising processes (following the Wickett, Gaskill and Damhorst model) and develop new branding strategies for the proposed lines. The teams performed trend, color, fabrication and target market research; developed sketches for a line; edited the sketches and presented their line plans; wrote specifications; fitted prototypes on fit models, and developed final production samples for presentation to industry. The branding students developed a SWOT analysis, a Brand Measurement report, a mind-map for the brands and a fully integrated Marketing Report which was presented alongside the ideas for the new lines. In future if the opportunity arises to work in this collaborative way with an existing company who wishes to look both at branding and product development strategies, classes will be scheduled at the same time so that students have more time to meet and discuss timelines and assigned tasks. As it was, student groups had to meet outside of each class time and this proved to be a challenging though not uncommon part of teamwork (Pfaff and Huddleston, 2003). Although the logistics of this exercise were time-consuming to set up and administer, professors felt that the benefits to students were multiple. The most important benefit, according to student feedback from both classes, was the opportunity to work with industry professionals, follow their process, and see the results of their work evaluated by the people who made the decisions at the company level. Faculty members were grateful to have a "real-world" case to work with in the classroom to provide focus. Creative ideas and strategies were traded as plans were made, extending and strengthening the departmental links be tween the branding and product development areas. By working not only with students coming from a different knowledge base, but also having to keep in contact with the industry partner and follow the framework and timeline of industry practice, student teams were challenged to produce excellent and innovative work under new circumstances. Working on the product development and branding for "real-life" brands that are struggling gave students an opportunity to see how closely their coursework ties in with the real-world and how creativity, collaboration and flexibility are necessary components of both the design and business aspects of company operations. Industry personnel were impressed by (a) the level and depth of knowledge and execution in the student projects, and (b) the creativity of new ideas for the brands.
Green or an environmental consciousness has been a major issue for businesses and government offices, as well as consumers, worldwide. In response to this movement, the Korean government announced, in the early 2000s, the era of "Green Growth" as a way to encourage green-related business activities. The Korean fashion industry, in various levels of involvement, presents diverse eco-friendly products as a part of the green movement. These apparel products include organic products and recycled clothing. For these companies to be successful, they need information about who are the consumers who consider green issues (e.g., environmental sustainability) as part of their personal values when making a decision for product purchase, use, and disposal. These consumers can be considered as eco-sumers. Previous studies have examined consumers' purchase intention for or with eco-friendly products. In addition, studies have examined influential factors used to identify the eco-sumers or green consumers. However, limited attention was paid to eco-sumers' disposal or recycling behavior of clothes in comparison with their green product purchases. Clothing disposal behaviors are ways that consumer can get rid of unused clothing and in clue temporarily lending the item or permanently eliminating the item by "handing down" (e.g., giving it to a younger sibling), donating, exchanging, selling, or simply throwing it away. Accordingly, examining purchasing behaviors of eco-friendly fashion items in conjunction with clothing disposal behaviors should improve understanding of a consumer's clothing consumption behavior from the environmental perspective. The purpose of this exploratory study is to provide descriptive information about Korean eco-sumers who have ecologically-favorable lifestyles and behaviors when buying and disposing of clothes. The objectives of this study are to (a) categorize Koreans on the basis of clothing disposal behaviors; (b) investigate the differences in demographics, lifestyles, and clothing consumption values among segments; and (c) compare the purchase intention of eco-friendly fashion items and influential factors among segments. A self-administered questionnaire was developed based on previous studies. The questionnaire included 10 items of clothing disposal behavior, 22 items of LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) characteristics, and 19 items of consumption values, measured by five-point Likert-type scales. In addition, the purchase intention of two eco-friendly fashion items and 11 attributes of each item were measured by seven-point Likert type scales. Two polyester fleece pullovers, made from fabric created from recycled bottles with the PET identification code, were selected from one Korean brand and one US imported brand among outdoor sportswear brands. A brief description of each product with a color picture was provided in the survey. Demographic variables (i.e., gender, age, marital status, education level, income, occupation) were also included. The data were collected through a professional web survey agency during May 2009. A total of 600 final usable questionnaires were analyzed. The age of respondents ranged from 20 to 49 years old with a mean age of 34 years. Fifty percent of the respondents were males and about 58% were married, and 62% reported having earned university degrees. Principal components factor analysis with varimax rotation was used to identify the underlying dimensions of the clothing disposal behavior scale, and three factors were generated (i.e., reselling behavior, donating behavior, non-recycling behavior). To categorize the respondents on the basis of clothing disposal behaviors, k-mean cluster analysis was used, and three segments were obtained. These consumer segments were labeled as 'Resale Group', 'Donation Group', and 'Non-Recycling Group.' The classification results indicated approximately 98 percent of the original cases were correctly classified. With respect to demographic characteristics among the three segments, significant differences were found in gender, marital status, occupation, and age. LOHAS characteristics were reduced into the following five factors: self-satisfaction, family orientation, health concern, environmental concern, and voluntary service. Significant differences were found in the LOHAS factors among the three clusters. Resale Group and Donation Group showed a similar predisposition to LOHAS issues while the Non-Recycling Group presented the lowest mean scores on the LOHAS factors compared to the other segments. The Resale and Donation Groups described themselves as enjoying or being satisfied with their lives and spending spare-time with family. In addition, these two groups cared about health and organic foods, and tried to conserve energy and resources. Principal components factor analysis generated clothing consumption values into the following three factors: personal values, social value, and practical value. The ANOVA test with the factors showed differences primarily between the Resale Group and the other two groups. The Resale Group was more concerned about personal value and social value than the other segments. In contrast, the Non-Recycling Group presented the higher level of social value than did Donation Group. In a comparison of the intention to purchase eco-friendly products, the Resale Group showed the highest mean score on intent to purchase Product A. On the other hand, the Donation Group presented the highest intention to purchase for Product B among segments. In addition, the mean scores indicated that the Korean product (Product B) was more preferable for purchase than the U.S. product (Product A). Stepwise regression analysis was used to identify the influence of product attributes on the purchase intention of eco product. With respect to Product A, design, price and contribution to environmental preservation were significant to predict purchase intention for the Resale Group, while price and compatibility with my image factors were significant for the Donation Group. For the Non-Recycling Group, design, price compatibility with the factors of my image, participation to eco campaign, and contribution to environmental preservation were significant. Price appropriateness was significant for each of the three clusters. With respect to Product B, design, price and compatibility with my image factors were important, but different attributes were associated significantly with purchase intention for each of the three groups. The influence of LOHAS characteristics and clothing consumption values on intention to purchase Products A and B were also examined. The LOHAS factor of health concern and the personal value factor were significant in the relationships with the purchase intention; however, the explanatory powers were low in the three segments. Findings showed that each group as classified by clothing disposal behaviors showed differences in the attributes of a product, personal values, and the LOHAS characteristics that influenced their purchase intention of eco-friendly products. Findings would enable organizations to understand eco-friendly behavior and to design appropriate strategic decisions to appeal eco-sumers.
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.