The standardization of food ingredients in the procurement system is essential to maintain the quality of food services. Currently, school food services in Korea do not have such a standardized system, which results in inconsistency of the procurement procedure of food ingredients. This study examined how school foodservice nutritionists perceive the standardization of food ingredients in the procurement system. In particular, this study investigated school foodservice nutritionists’ perception on the appropriateness, convenience, and necessity of newly proposed standardized procurement system consisting of a classification and attribute system. A total of 311 nutritionists from 123 elementary schools, 99 middle schools, and 84 high schools were surveyed via both online and offline from June 16-24, 2016. The major findings of the study are as follows. First, three quarters of the nutritionists perceived the newly proposed standardized procurement system to be necessary, while approximately sixty percent of the respondents reported that the newly proposed standardized procurement system is convenient. More than half of the respondents perceived the newly proposed standardized procurement system to be appropriate. The results suggest that the new standardized system directs a better way in terms of the classification and attribute systems of food ingredients. This study suggests that the standardization of food ingredients should be implemented at the operation of school food services.

The purpose of this research was to examine simultaneously health halo and health horn effects across two fast food restaurant brands that have healthful or unhealthful images (i.e., McDonald's and Subway). Specifically, we investigated the moderating effects of nutrition information disclosure and dietary restraint on behavioral intention of four menus from the two brands. Two menus from the McDonald’s and two menus from the Subway, respectively, had been selected as stimuli, and each menu represented health halo confirmation (the Roast-Chicken sandwich) / disconfirmation (the Italian-Spicy sandwich), and health horn confirmation (the Big Mac burger) / disconfirmation (the McSpicy-Cajun burger), respectively. This study employed a mixed factorial design: 2 (nutrition information: present vs. absent) X 2 (dietary restraint: restrained eater vs. unrestrained eater) X 4 (menu type: a health halo or a health horn (for the Subway and the McDonald’s with objective healthfulness). The survey was conducted on October 11- 17, 2016, by a research company, Macromill EMBRAIN in Korea, which possessed more than 1 million panel members. Cell sizes were 149 and 146 for the between-subjects factor. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the nutrition information disclosure experimental conditions (either present or absent) and presented with all four menus. The results showed that the behavioral intentions of all three menus, except health horn disconfirmation menu, were decreased. In particular, the effect size of health halo disconfirmation menu (decrease in behavioral intention) was the greatest. There was no difference in the behavioral intention of four menus between the restrained eater and unrestrained eater. Thus, brands positioned as healthy should well manage the expectation levels of their customers. A brand positioned as healthy, such as the Subway, has to manage the health expectation of its customer not get too high, or the brand has to continuously strive to satisfy its client's expectations. A brand positioned as unhealthy (eg, McDonald’s) needs to actively develop low-calorie menus, healthy menus or similar side dishes. Although indulgent menus would account for the majority of the revenue, existence of healthy menus / side dishes would lessen the guilty feelings of the customers of the restaurant and the brand. This is the first study which identified both the health halo effect and the health horn effect on restaurant brand image. The results of this study confirm the need to provide nutrition information on dining out menus and would help consumers choose healthy menus.

Obesity has become a major health concern among the public, and menu labeling was mandated in many countries several years ago as an intervention to reduce obesity. Although the pursuit of healthy foods is apparent, research indicates that majority of restaurant customers do not use nutritional information for menu selection. The present study investigated customer attitudes and behaviors regarding menu labeling; specifically, the relationships among customer motivation, attitudes, menu label use, and healthy menu selection. Data were collected from a survey of 509 restaurant customers in South Korea. The findings indicated a positive effect of motivation on attitudes, menu label use, and healthy menu selection, respectively. Attitudes also positively influenced menu label use and healthy menu selection. Regarding the relationships among the variables in the proposed model, the strongest relationship was found between menu label use and healthy menu selection. In addition, attitudes serve as a mediator in the relationships between motivation and menu label use, and between motivation and healthy menu selection. Menu labeling use also mediates between attitudes and healthy menu selection. These findings can help governments or industries improve customer use of menu labels and therefore help reduce public obesity. This study is valuable in that it investigates restaurant customer use of menu labels since the menu labeling initiatives were mandated several years ago. It is academically important in that it examines various customer attitudinal and behavioral variables together regarding menu labeling.

The purpose of menu labeling is to offer eating environments with improved healthy food selection. Similar to U.S. policies, the Korea government enforces the Special Act on Children’s Food Safety and Nutrition for provision of nutritional labeling in chain restaurants. Considering the importance of dining services for college students and their interests in health, this study examined college students’ perception toward nutrition information provided by university dining services. A survey was conducted for university students. Students' recognition of nutrition information for university dining services was lower than recognition of nutrition information for commercial food services. The most common reason cited by students for considering nutrition information of university dining services was customer rights, followed by health maintenance. Students showed a high tendency to use nutrition information of university dining services. College students’ motivation for knowing nutrition information of university dining services included health and value interests. Students’ knowledge of nutrition had a positive effect on their intention to know nutrition information. The findings of this study offer university administrators and contract food service management companies directions for developing menu labeling for university dining services.

Restaurants implement menu labeling to provide nutritional information to customers in an attempt to help customers select healthy menu items. Considering the increase in food-away-from-home consumption, the purpose of this study was to identify motivators and barriers in restaurant customers regarding use of menu labeling. Data were collected from a survey on restaurant customers in Seoul, Korea. The findings of this study indicate that customers used menu labeling for health reasons. However, barriers to using menu labeling were identified as small font size, difficulty in locating nutritional information display, and difficulty in interpreting nutritional information. In addition, they also suggested expanding the scope of menu labeling for restaurants by including chain restaurants with less than 100 units. The findings of this study offer strategies for the government to improve menu labeling practices for customers.

The purpose of the study is to determine how consumers perceive certification marks for agricultural products. The study examined three agricultural product certifications, such as the certification of environment-friendly agricultural products, Good Agricultural Procuts (GAP) certification mark, and United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) certification mark. A survey was utilized for data collection from adults over the age of 19 in November, 2013. A total of 390 questionnaires were distributed, and 300 of those were obtained for an analysis of the study. The results were as follows. First, consumers' awareness of, image of, and credibility on the agricultural products with the certification marks were not significantly different among the three certification marks except consumers’ awareness. Second, consumers’ purchase intentions for and willingness to pay for the agricultural products with the certification marks were not significantly different among the three certification marks. Third, these variables were not significantly different between buying group and non-buying group except consumers’ awareness. Lastly, buying group and non-buying group were significantly different only in gender and marital status. The findings offer implications to the food and food service industry regarding consumers’ purchase of certified agricultural products. Further, the study enforces the roles of food industry for environment.

Smart Tourism is regarded as a new paradigm in the tourism industry. The purpose of this article is to present the first bibliometric study of Smart Tourism to help understanding the means of smart tourism by applying a co-word analysis. Co-word analysis is a content analysis technique which uses a pattern of co-occurrence of pair of items such as words, nouns or phrases in a corpus of texts to identify the relationships between ideas and the main themes within the subject areas. Smart tourism has been an issue in tourism industry these days. Some scholars are trying to define the ‘smart tourism’ as a different meaning from the ‘mobile tourism’ that is still commonly used. Practically, the term ‘smart’ is getting popular in tourism industry, since the advent of smartphones. Though the term ‘smart’ has not been defined clearly, it is still used even in academia. To examine the intellectual structureof Smart Tourism, this study used keywords in articles from the academic database in KCI (Korea Citation Index) from 2010 to February, 2014. This study used both quantitative and qualitative measures. Quantitative data are used to put very related concepts together, while qualitative indicators are used to measure the impact of the detected themes. In addition, the study presented bibliometric maps to show the networks between the main concepts treated by the Smart Tourism domains. The maps provide insights into the structure of the Smart Tourism with visualizing the division of the field into several subfields. For a method of the study, the main 10 keywords-‘smartphone’, ‘SNS’, ‘ubiquitous’, ‘service quality’, ‘LBS’, ‘AR’,…and so on.- related to Smart Tourism extracted from policy and trend reports of governmental offices(i.e. Mistry of Culture, Sport and Tourism), company of government(i.e. Korea Tourism Organization), and research institutes(Samsung Economic Research Institute, Korea Culture & Tourism Institute). Using 10 main keywords, we collected 185 articles related to the smart tourism filed.Then within 185 articles, there are 1,347author keywords extracted.After thenormalization of 1,347 keywords, 366 author keywords were selected for data analysis.A co-occurrence matrix and an affinity matrix were generated based on Pearson’s correlation coefficients to create a clustering of the words using hierarchical clustering analysis. To visualize these intellectual structures, this study carried out a network analysis with NodeXL to which a data algorithm in R was applied. These findings appear to indicate the potential usefulness of bibliometric studies in uncovering the different research fields’ intellectual structure and evolution. This evolution providesan opportunity to anticipate interesting developments in Smart Tourism field with respect to key topics of the field as well as predicting which topics are less likely to assume a central role in Tourism IT inthe near future.The study benefits researchers and practitionersby offering guidelines to the process of selecting research topics and of formulating policy regarding smart tourism.