Topic Features in Negative Customer Reviews: Evidence Based on Text Data Mining

The Review of Socionetwork Strategies - Several studies have focused on the effects of online negative customer reviews on sales, especially pertaining to Internet shopping and e-retailing....     

Sales Strategy Mining Support with Visualization of Moving History

Strategic usage in data mining of sales data has come under increased focus as a result of the growth of data mining studies using electrical data, such as Point of Sale (POS) data. However, many of these mining systems only output results such as frequently appearing patterns, while, instead, they should be aimed at people who mine data. In this paper, a framework for leading and supporting new ideas from data is introduced. Based on this framework, a system that supports strategic usage in the data mining of sales data is proposed. The system deals not only with POS data, but also with the moving history of each customer. The system visualizes POS and moving history data, so that an analyzer inputs conditions to narrow down customers and acquires customer features. In addition to the ordinal outputs of a mining system, the analyzer interprets the meaning of his/her input and output to create a new strategy based on the framework. According to the experimental results, new strategies derived from the moving history were created.     

The Effectiveness of Social Media for Business Activities in Japanese Firms

A large number of firms use social media for various business activities. This paper clarifies how social media has become effective to sales in Japanese firms. To this purpose, the following are addressed: (i) whether social media is useful for company activities, (ii) what kinds of business activities are affected using social media, and (iii) how social media improves the final outcomes of sales for firms. This study uses data of business activities and social media conducted in 2014. Probit analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM) are employed. Probit analysis clarifies the relationships between the effects of social media and its use in sales. The SEM model clarifies the relationships among the effects of social media use in business. In the SEM, a model is examined by taking sales caused by use of social media as an explained variable, while the explanatory variables are the first and intermediate effects of social media. The results indicate that social media is effective for business activities such as promoting sales. This study may help to promote social media in Japanese firms.     

Facebook Content Strategies and Citizens’ Online Engagement: The Case of Greek Local Governments

This paper analyzes the communication strategies used by Greek local governments through the utilization of Web 2.0 technologies, specifically Facebook, and the effectiveness of these strategies in relation to citizens’ online engagement. More specifically, it examines Facebook communication strategies and levels of citizens’ engagement. For this purpose, we conducted a content analysis on the active and official Facebook pages of local municipalities in Greece from January 2017 until the end of September 2017. Our results suggest a rise in the percentage of active Facebook pages maintained by local governments in comparison to our 2014 study. Our results also show that local governments in Greece are using Facebook in a predominantly top-down manner to promote events organized by the municipality and to push one-way information to citizens about their services and actions. Local authorities have, however, made significant progress in relation to posts that support transparency and accountability and that enhance or mobilize citizens’ participation. Our evaluation of local government Facebook strategies indicates that marketing the municipality to external public, such as tourists, and providing information about services are effective strategies that drive citizens’ online attitude expression (liking), engagement (commenting), and advocacy behavior (sharing). According to our analysis, local governments in Greece prefer the strategies that we found to be the least engaging. In addition, our study provides interesting details of how specific characteristics and modes of Facebook messages (photos, videos, URLs, hashtags, and mentions) impact on citizens’ engagement. Finally, our results provide valuable insights for social media managers in local government who aim to increase the impact of their municipal Facebook pages.     

Evaluation of a Multi-robot Cafe Based on Service Quality Dimensions

While AI applications are popular in many domains, they should work harmoniously with domain exerts and end users. Furthermore, to develop such harmonious AI applications, we need agile AI platforms for not only developers, but also domain experts. Currently, we have developed PRactical INTElligent aPplicationS (PRINTEPS), which is a user-centric platform to develop integrated intelligent applications. This paper reports on a multi-robot cafe as a practical application of PRINTEPS and evaluates its service quality at a university festival. It is not clear if robotic services are perceived as attractive and/or valuable, and how the concept of robotic services could lead to customer satisfaction. Therefore, the evaluation of the quality of such services is necessary to identify the key factors that could contribute to improving customer satisfaction. The purpose of this research is to identify key factors in improving customer satisfaction in robotic services by evaluating the service quality of the multi-robot cafe. We designed questionnaire items based on SERVQUAL which is one of the service quality evaluation measurement methods and conducted a questionnaire survey at a multi-robot cafe held at a university festival. From the collected data, we modeled and evaluated the relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction to identify key factors in robotic services using a Bayesian network. In addition, the experiment confirms the usefulness of PRINTEPS.     

Research Note: The Paradox of Cloud Computing in Japan

Cloud Computing is defined as computer usage delivered as a service over the Internet. This cloud computing is classified as public computing, private computing, or hybrid computing. Public cloud computing is open to any customer who pays service charges. On the contrary, private cloud computing is used by a member of a company who has constructed a cloud computing system over a restricted domain on that company's information infrastructure. Hybrid cloud computing is a mix of both the public and private. Which type of cloud computing is popular in Japan? To answer this question I mailed questionnaires to 2,284 enterprises listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Market in 2012 and 2013. I analyzed the relationship between these answers and financial indexes using a multinomial logistic regression model. I concluded that the total assets was the most effective factor in the decision to introduce the public cloud, and the accumulated profit was one of the most effective factors in the decision to introduce the hybrid cloud. These findings are not consistent with orthodox price theory.     

A Pricing Strategy with Consumption Externality when the Reference Group is Large

This paper provides an analysis of firms’ optimal prices when individual utility exhibits both material and other consumer effects. We construct a model and conduct an analysis in the following four steps: (1) By using a conjoint analysis of data, we set up a hierarchical Bayesian model and estimate its parameters, which are composed of individual utility functions. (2) We calculate the number of sales in each time period and derive the total sales throughout the given period. (3) We estimate the demand functions in the presence and absence of consumption externalities. (4) Finally, we calculate the profit functions and derive the optimal prices taking into account various product attributes. By applying our analysis to the book market of Japan, we find that the optimal price is lower when an externality is present than when absent. The intuition behind this result is that pricing low and selling a large number of books from an early stage increases the externality effect, yielding a higher profit for firms.     

Modeling Bank Runs in Financial Crises

In recent years, financial crises have occurred frequently in each region, and banks are facing harsh management environments. Bank runs of customers during a financial crisis are one of a bank’s most serious risks. This research aims to build a bank run model for financial crises, use that model to estimate the amount of deposit funds which flow out, and propose a framework for financial crisis risk management. The model proposed in this paper enables understanding of the factors which have the largest impacts on bank runs, providing valuable information for banks to cope with such risks. The model uses survey data, and clarified that bank runs have differences which depend on customer characteristics and branch location. We understood that during a financial crisis, an appropriate branch strategy must be adopted depending on the location and customer characteristics of each bank branch.     

夏春秋：小小散热器风风火火闯九州

苹果平板电脑卖得好,九州风神电脑周边产品的销量也水涨船高。这看起来是一种内在逻辑,实际上是九州风神独特的市场策略。掌门人夏春秋十年磨一剑,不仅将九州风神散热器打造成内地第一品牌,而且成功占领全球50多个国家的市场。     

Spam mails impede economic growth

We estimate labor losses caused by spam mails and input these estimated values into a production function, while also estimating damage to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Japan. As a result, we have found that spam mails decreased the Japanese GDP by about 500 billion yen in 2004. This marginal negative effect of spam mail to the GDP increased with the progress of broadband in 2000. Moreover, from the result of a social simulation conducted by the authors, the amount of damage is projected to reach 1% of the Japanese GDP by 2010, unless adequate countermeasures are taken against spam mails. This projection provides a statistical fundamental to several theoretical analyses of spam mails.     

PRINTEPS: An Integrated Intelligent Application Development Platform based on Stream Reasoning and ROS

Although AI and service robot applications have become very popular in many domains recently, many of them are specific applications and it is still difficult to develop integrated intelligent applications such as a robot teahouse and teaching assistant robots. To develop such integrated intelligent applications, we need integrated intelligent application platforms that have AI integration and agile process facilities. From the above background, we are currently developing PRactical INTElligent aPplicationS (PRINTEPS), which is a platform for developing integrated intelligent applications by combining only five types of modules, namely knowledge-based reasoning, spoken dialogue, image sensing, motion management, and machine learning. This paper proposes a workflow editor in PRINETPS based on a service-oriented architecture and a Robot Operating System that enables real-time parallel processing for multiple robots and sensors by integrating the five types of modules. The editor also supports not only developers but also domain experts in updating workflows frequently. This paper also proposes a novel method to integrate signals acquired through image sensing with knowledge (ontologies and business rules) using C-SPARQL and Semantic Web Rule Language. To evaluate PRINTEPS, we developed a robot teahouse application including customer reception and guidance to table services using a humanoid robot with PRINTEPS. Through this case study, we demonstrated that the behaviors of the robot can be modified by changing the workflow, the ontology, and the rules.     

Data Mining Approach for Direct Marketing of Banking Products with Profit/Cost Analysis

Nowadays, many businesses, such as banks, use direct marketing methods to reach customers to minimize the campaigning cost and maximize the return rate. To achieve this, huge customer data should be analyzed to determine the most appropriate product offer for each customer and the most effective channel to reach her/him. However, since only a very small amount of responses collected from the customers are positive to the offers, the dataset is very imbalanced. This decreases sensitivity ratio of prediction results and makes it difficult to make a successful product and channel selection for the offer. In this paper, we propose a hybrid system, which first classifies the customers to decide if s/he is interested in the offered product, and then clusters them for product and channel suggestions. Experiments with real life banking data show very promising accuracy results for predicting the proper product and channel for the customers. Moreover, cost-profit analysis is also added to this problem. Our experiment results show that the proposed method decreases a fraction of the total profit, but since the decrease in the total cost is very large, there is a huge increase in the overall profit/cost ratio.     

青年心态与大众文化

大众文化虽然有其局限,但其对于青年的心态和生活的正面的影响也不容小觑,对他们更加有韧性地面对社会问题有其积极的意义。这些年来,对于80后的关注一直是媒体和公众的热点。现在80后已经开始进入了30岁的门槛,逐渐进入人生的中年阶段的开始。现实的种种问题开始超越了想象,变得更加现实和具体。与此同时,90后的第一批大学生将在今年的暑期毕业走向社会。     

水木源华：引航智能电网

水木源华多年专注于配电线路故障检测，积累了丰富的技术和运行经验，开发生产的新型配电自动化终端．在行业内得到高度评价，国内首创的LTU、电子式互感器、激光除冰装置等都有巨大的市场前景。     

Mining History of Gamification Towards Finding Expertise in Question and Answering Communities: Experience and Practice with Stack Exchange

Recently, an online Q&A tool has become an essential part of individual communities and organizations of experts on specific topics. Using the answers to questions about specific topics will help such communities work more efficiently in their fields. Currently, Q&A online communities are adopting gamification to engage users by granting awards to successful users. In this paper, we investigate how to mine award achievement histories to find expertise. We propose the use of sequence analysis and clustering techniques. Specifically, we study the history of Stack Exchange, a large Q&A community that employs gamification. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study of using award achievement history to find expertise in Q&A communities.     

Customers’ Continuance Intention to Use Mobile Banking: Development and Testing of an Integrated Model

The Review of Socionetwork Strategies - Drawing upon the technology acceptance model and trust theory, the present study develops a model to examine the effects of antecedent variables in...     

Broadband Demand Analysis for Network Building

An increase of broadband demand is forecasted by transitional methods that consider the effect of this increase through many factors, such as customer requirement diversification, and new service introduction and deployment under competition. Broadband demand forecasting has become important for closing the digital divide, promoting regional developments, and constructing networks economically; therefore, a demand forecast model that considers the mechanisms of market structure is necessary. In this paper, a demand analysis method for broadband access combining macro- and micro-data mining is proposed, and the service choice behaviour of customers is introduced as a customer model not only to express the macro trend of market structure, but also to consider area marketing. The proposed method can estimate the potential demand, determine the point at which broadband demand growth peaks in a specified area, and support a decision for ultra high-speed broadband access facility installation.     

A Conjoint Analysis of a Next Generation Network (NGN) in Japan

A conjoint analysis on a Web survey in 2010 with 160 participants and 8 questions shows that a Marginal Willingness To Pay (MWTP) on a Next Generation Network (NGN) of Flet’s Hikari Next is lower than its actual price as provided by NTT East. Conjoint analysis is one application of conditional logit. MWTP is WTP when one unit of property is increased, and MWTP is used to verify how much each person evaluates each property. Higher transmission speed, digital TV availability, and higher Internet security affect the MWTP positively, and the amount of the monthly payment of NGN affects the MWTP negatively. Therefore, it is assumed that the NGN of Flet’s Hikari Next by NTT East will be accepted by potential customers and diffused as a major communications service of NTT East and NTT West. NGN providers may be able to maximize their benefits by adjusting the NGN of Flet’s Hikari Next property to meet customer demands, especially in digital TV availability, higher transmission speed, and communications security.     

The Boosting Effect of E-WOM on Macro-level Consumption: A Cross-Industry Empirical Analysis in Japan

In this study, we carry out an empirical analysis on how electronic word-of-mouth (hereinafter “e-WOM”) marketing on e-WOM websites and electronic-commerce websites on the Internet boosts consumption on a macro-level. In our analysis, we conduct a model analysis of consumer behavior using data composed of more than 30,000 questionnaire surveys and quantitatively find the elasticity coefficient of the boost to consumption by performing a two-step GMM (generalized method of moments), which uses instrumental variables. The results of the analysis show e-WOM significantly increased expenditures in six fields: computers, electrical appliances, etc.; music; hobbies; clothing, accessories, etc.; beauty products, etc.; and goods for everyday life, etc. Furthermore, there was no field that had a significantly negative value. These results showed that, in the majority of the target fields, e-WOM had not only the effect of winning customers from the competition, but also the effect of boosting consumption on a macro-level. In addition, even from people’s subjective evaluations, there were many in all the generational groups who said that e-WOM boosted expenditures.     

Who Works at the Interface in Knowledge Spillover Across Organizational Boundaries?

To investigate the characteristics of engineers who act as an interface in transferring knowledge across national boundaries, I conducted an empirical analysis regarding the mobility of engineers in electrical manufacturing firms from Japan to South Korea. Statistical findings from negative binomial regressions show that the experience of working with foreign engineers facilitates knowledge spillover. In addition, the results show that interfirm knowledge transfer is more likely to occur when the engineers of the hiring firm work together with mobile engineers who (1) were focal members at their previous firm, (2) had a good connection with focal members, and (3) are young. This study suggests that engineers from external organizations are effective in knowledge transfer, especially if they are young, mobile engineers who were focal members at their previous firm and had a good connection with a focal member—and can act as an interface in transferring tacit knowledge.