An Outlook : Flower Industry in Japan

Since 1970 the Japanese flower market has shown a steady growth. After 1990 there has been a rapid increase of imported cut flowers and flower bulbs. After 1994 there has been a stagnation in auction sales. The increase in number of growers stopped after 1992. About 60% of Japanese households never buy flowers at all. The Japanese preference for flowers is the natural setting. Auction system is very popular : 95% of ornamental crops go through auction markets. Imported cut flowers account for 6-7% of domestic consumption, about 80% of import is also distributed by auction market. Major players in distribution are auction market ($5.3 billion, 300 auctions), wholesale company ($1.4 billion, 500 wholesalers) and flowers shops ($8.2 billion, 26,000 florists). Minor players are supermarkets ($0.9 billion) and importers ($0.2 billion). Supermarkets account for less than 10% of final consumption of ornamentals. Changes in auction systems since the end of the \u2780 are : the integration of small and medium sized auctions, modernisation with electronical (clock-system) and logistic technology and realignment in organisational structure. As the flower market was blooming in the middele of \u2780s, 200 major and big Japanese companies flocked into the flower industry. Unfortunately, most of new entries failed, partly because lack of knowledge and/or personnel in running flower business and partly because of low productivity/insufficient sales volume resulting in low profitability. Survivors in the middle of \u2790s are Kirin and Suntory. Kirin Agribio EC is presently one of the leading companies in floricultural industry. Fides, Barbaret & Blanc, SGP and Hiljo are now under control of Kirin and in the domestic market Kirin also bought companies and sets up joint ventures with a retail chain and a wholesale business. In contrast, Suntory focusses on breeding and the nursery sector. Since 1989 they have been trying to breed a \u27blue rose\u27 in cooperation with the Autralian company Floregene. Major chain stores like Daiei and Jusco have not been succesfull. Independent florists, however, made succesful efforts. Direct marketing has been dominated by JFTD. Information technology will enable us to get around the existing auction markets. Dealing through a real time video auction system, or setting price and quantity in advance via Internet and later obtaining fresh flowers of better quality is possible in the near future. In Japan three companies are planning to establish a virtual trading system as Tele Flower Auction in Holland. Aucnet, a leading satellite auction company in used car business in Japan, announced to expand their business into the flower market. Nippon Steel is experimenting with Electronic Commerce by fresh flowers. Flower Auction Japan is designing a logistic network system with full coverage of all retail and business customers across the country

A Comparative Study of Data Gathering Procedures in Conjoint Measurement

An experiment is designed for testing validity and reliability of two data gathering procedures in conjoint measurement. Computer-interactive Adaptive Conjoint Analysis (ACA in short) and the conventional Full-Profile method (FP in short) are among those compared for predictive performance. After responding to four questionnaires, two data collection procedures each for two product categories (chocolate and soft drink), in a computer-assisted session, two hundred and six respondents picked up their most favorite brand(s) from a set of brands with relatively high shares in the market. For soft drink category, partworths of product attributes are estimated for price, manufacturer, brand category, and size of container. For chocolate, importance weights are estimated for price, maker, taste, and product form. Average correlation coefficients between parameter estimates derived from the different data collection procedures (ACA and FP) are quite high; 0.52 on the average for both product categories, mostly above 0.65 for individual respondents. Using parameter estimates, total utility scores could be calculated for the brands presented at the final stage of computer interview. Then, the first choice could be predicted and matched with the brand actually picked up by each respondent. "Batting Average" for FP method is 53.9%, which is fairly higher than 44.7% for ACA procedure in predicting the choice of chocolate. However, ACA with an average of 45.7% could hit the right cans of Cola, Tea, or Orange Juice better than FP only with an average of 40.4%. We recommend that researchers would better make use of ACA against FP, when there are many attributes and/or profiles, since interviewing with ACA is much easier than that with FP

A Probabilistic Choice Model of Multiple Items Selection

Conventional choice model of consumer behavior posits that buyers choose a single item or one brand at a time. However, there are many occasions that consumers pick up several items or a couple of brands at the same time to satisfy their own needs and/or to maximize their family\u27s utility. We can observe this kind of phenomena in the market of packaged consumer products such as tobacco, candy bar, beer, and soft drink. We construct a new probabilistic choice model of consumer behavior. In order to deal with such a situation that a consumer makes a simultaneous selection of multiple items from his consideration set of brands, we assume a two stage model of consumer choice behavior. At first stage, we suppose, a consumer makes a decision whether he buys a single brand or a mixed bundle of brands. Then he makes a decision of which brand (s) to be picked up and assigns the allocation number of multiple brands. We use a set of point-of-sale beer data scanned at a convenience store to estimate the model parameters. Our model is well fitted into the empirical data. Marketing implications and the possibilities of further extensions with our basic idea are provided

日本における基質特異性拡張型β-ラクタマーゼ産生肺炎桿菌の分子遺伝学的特徴：CTX-M-15の優位性と高病原性クローンの出現

Objective: To provide data on the molecular characteristics of extended-spectrum β-lactamase (ESBL)-producing Klebsiella pneumoniae clinical isolates in Japan. Methods: A total of 100 clinical isolates of ESBL-producing K. pneumoniae collected throughout Japan between June and July 2018 were studied. ESBL genes were analyzed using PCR and DNA sequencing. Transferability of ESBL genes was investigated by conjugation experiments. Plasmid replicon types, virulence genes (rmpA, rmpA2, iucA, iroB, and peg-344) associated with hypervirulent K. pneumoniae (hvKp), and capsule types were detected using PCR. Genotyping was performed using multilocus sequence typing. Results: All ESBL-producing isolates carried blaCTX-M genes. The most predominant CTX-M-type identified was CTX-M-15 (n=55). We identified 24 sequence types (STs) among the CTX-M-15 producers, with ST25 (n=8) being the most common. Most of the transconjugants carrying blaCTX-M-15 contained the FIIk replicon. Of the 100 ESBL-producing isolates, 31 were hvKp defined by the presence of the virulence genes. These ESBL-producing hvKp isolates belonged to eight STs (STs 23, 25, 36, 65, 86, 268, 412, and 4492), with five capsule types (K1, K2, K20, K57, and undefined). Conclusions: CTX-M-15 was the predominant ESBL among K. pneumoniae isolates from Japan. This study shows that ESBL-producing hvKp strains comprising various clones are emerging in Japan.博士（医学）・甲第769号・令和3年3月15日© 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of International Society for Infectious Diseases. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

Latent class metric conjoint analysis

A latent class methodology for conjoint analysis is proposed, which simultaneously estimates market segment membership and part-worth utilities for each derived market segment using mixtures of multivariate conditional normal distributions. An E-M algorithm to estimate the parameters of these mixtures is briefly discussed. Finally, an application of the methodology to a commercial study (pretest) examining the design of a remote automobile entry device is presented.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/47104/1/11002_2004_Article_BF00994135.pd

An Approach to Simultaneous Estimation and Segmentation in Conjoint Analysis

This paper presents a simultaneous approach to estimating partworths and aggregating consumers in conjoint analysis. First, based on a logit choice model, a “ridge”-like procedure for estimating individual partworths is proposed, and using simulation, the reliability of the estimator is examined. A method of aggregating consumers homogeneous in preference is then presented. The effectiveness of the aggregation procedure is tested on the simulated data. Finally, to illustrate how the total procedure can be applied to the real world, a set of preference data for Japanese automobiles is used.logit model, market segmentation, clustering, information measure