In recent marketing research, the concept of value co-creation, in which different actors such as companies and customers collaborate to create value, has become mainstream. From the perspective of value co-creation, this laboratory studies how customers’ perceived experiences influence their well-being and how the experiences of frontline employees, who are service providers, influence customer experiences.
Recently, we have also been working on the interaction between service robots and customer experience, considering that service robots, such as catering robots, have been becoming an indispensable part of our lives and workplaces.

As geopolitical risks such as the U.S.-China confrontation have emerged, security restrictions on trade, technology transfer, and foreign investment have increased. Our research project is to empirically clarify the nature of the international economic order in the “Age of Fragmentation”. In this process, we also analyze geopolitical risks in the operations of multinational corporations.
Moreover, as the war in Ukraine has shown, technologies developed by civilian companies are being applied to new military equipment to great effect. As innovation occurs in a variety of locations, governments are seeking to expand the base of companies involved in defense production. We also study the conditions for such policies to be effective in liberal democracies.

Public opinion is key word in mass media.Because this word is often used.But how the public opinion been formed? A gap between politics and public opinion is very important issue.How has mass media reflected the will of the people? The spread of the Internet has changed our lives. We study about new information age.

To survive, the firm needs to construct the new environment where it can achieve competitive advantage. To do so, it first redefines the meanings of the existing resources. After the meaning of a resource changes, the meaning of its resource dependence may also change. The firm makes sense of the context of resource and resource dependence to stakeholders. It then creates its own business model. I research on such firm that changes its project purpose, its strategy and its organizational structure flexibly, and the ecosystem where firms don’t possess exclusively any resource but try to coexist with the others.

One of my research interests is the visual representation of relationships between observed variables. Graph modeling based on graph theory is used for this purpose. I and my collaborators have proposed a method of statistical computation using graph structures.

The other interest is the statistical analysis with missing data. In particular, my work is to develop statistical computation methods using the EM algorithm and Markov chain Monte Carlo. I am studying the acceleration of convergence of the EM algorithm and its application to statistical models.

CRM was developed by the laboratory of Yamaguchi is integrated in one database each company on another system decentralized information systems. Here, provides accurate customer information gathering, analysis and sharing. In addition, employees are working, you can take advantage of the system are. Plays the role of generating added value as a result, information infrastructure.

From this company is important, rather than in a specific department or human resources to implement CRM, employees share information, leverage and produce value added customer in problem-solving, while proposals to. It is a new concept of companies that cannot deliver value, judging by the value proposed by the companies using customer.

Now that Covid19 has settled down, the diversification of inbound customers will progress. Japan’s tourist areas will be required to be tourist areas that respond to diverse values such as religious diversity such as Halal, veganism, and LGBTQ. It means that each tourist area is required to select the value that is sought and to work on regional development that makes use of the strengths of the area.
Tourism has a broad base and a huge and growing market all over the world. In addition, it is an attractive industry that can realize tourism that benefits all people involved in tourism, including the industry, the business operators, and tourists.
I am interested in researching ways to help realize such a tourist area.

In today’s highly complex society, it is difficult to realize the value that each seeks without transcending the traditional boundaries between the public and private sectors, or between providers and consumers, and integrating each other’s resources. In this laboratory, we are conducting research on the ideas and methods of service design that enable to cross boundaries from conventional standpoints, and on the possibility of co-creating new value through their utilization. We are aiming for practical research that overcomes barriers that hinder the revitalization of organizations and regions, such as diffused hotels that renovate vacant houses and stores into lodging facilities and transform entire town into hotels.

Let me introduce the second topic of my research interests:
Consider a situation in which we wish to select items or variables so as to delete the redundant variables or to make a small dimensional rating scale to measure latent traits, variable selection in principal component analysis (PCA) is necessary to identify a subset of variables that represents all variables as much as possible.
In the figure below, the left-hand plot is a scatter plot of the 1st and 2nd principal components (PCs) obtained based on all 19 original variables, and the right-hand plot is based on seven selected variables. Little difference exists between the two configurations of PCs. This illustrates the meaningfulness of variable selection in PCA since selected variables can provide almost the same result as the original variables if the goal of the analysis is to observe the configuration of the PCs.

We can perform the variable selection in PCA as a prior analysis in big data analysis, and apply the proposed selection procedures to other multivariate methods such as factor analysis and correspondence analysis.In this topic, we also study on how to deal with categorical/qualitative data (for the first topic), and how to improve the computation effectively (for the third topic).

Satisfactory communication with others enables us to reduce interpersonal relationship stress and to enhance well-being.
Towards providing communication training that can help people communicate well, I have been studying verbal and nonverbal behavior of dyad, triad or small group in face-to-face and computer-mediated communication. For example, I examined what verbal and nonverbal channels were used by senders, and their channels had effectives on receivers in interpersonal persuasion.
I am currently studying communication behaviors and psychological safety during consensus building.

In sports, which continue to evolve with the development of technology, the focus on sports analytics is increasing year by year, and at the same time, we often see sports analysts with such skills in action. On the other hand, there are still many issues regarding the effective use of data and technology.
In sports analytics, there are two types of information that can be used as weapons: subjective information obtained from experience, intuition, and human relationships, and highly objective information using video and data. Based on this idea, I am working on research to solve problems in the field of sports analytics using data science.

In response to the crisis of social, cultural, and economic sustainability in rural areas caused by declining birthrates and aging populations, the regional management movement, in which industry, academia, government, and the private sector collaborate to solve problems, has attracted attention.
In this laboratory, we support the construction of marketing databases for tourism marketing organizations that practice regional management, while analyzing the information obtained from these databases and examining effective regional management strategies.
There are two topics in this laboratory,
(1) Research on the relationships and roles among entities in effectively functioning regional management,
(2) Research on the construction of a marketing database that contributes to the formulation of regional management strategies and on evaluation indices for regional management.

In Japan, Eigyo is often confused with sales and treated as a subordinate concept of marketing. However, in reality, Eigyo in a company plays a broad role in “connecting” the company with its customers, each department within the company, each department within the customer’s company, partner companies, domestic and overseas, and even society. Our research focuses on Eigyo as a process of business transformation and social problem solving, rather than simply selling products and services, and as a value-creating entity.

I am researching regional revitalization through sports tourism at facilities that utilize local natural capital and public goods. The area has capital that can be used as sports facilities such as sea, hills, rivers, waterfalls, earth lakes, parks, and roads. There are many in Okayama! In addition to large-scale facilities such as stadiums and arenas, we are working to create a playground by utilizing these regional capitals and to attract tourists from cities and overseas to the region.

The environment surrounding sports is changing along with changes in working styles and living conditions. We believe that the power of sports can further improve its attractiveness and enrich people’s lives by collaborating with local communities. We are conducting research on the promotion of sports and local communities, including collaboration between local communities (government, businesses, educational institutions, etc.) and professional and amateur sports clubs, and the creation of sports businesses. We are also engaged in research on the promotion of sports and regional sports businesses.

I collect various data on people’s behavior, attitudes, and psychological states, and conduct research to explore relationships among variables. I focus on social science research methods such as questionnaires and online experiments, but I also aim to conduct research in collaboration with adjacent fields such as humanities and engineering.
In particular, I am interested in understanding mechanisms by which people in a position to evaluate and make choices, such as consumers and users of services, compare objects and make decisions. I am currently focusing on the following research topics. (1) Research on mechanisms by which consumers compare and select products and services bearing brand names or proper nouns such as names of places or people. (2) Research on mechanisms by which tourists, current residents, and prospective residents evaluate attractiveness of regions such as prefectures and municipalities. (3) Research on mechanisms by which users evaluate satisfaction with SNS, the Internet, and services using 5G technology.

There are good times and bad times in sports, so it is said that in the sports business, you should not think on the premise of “victory.” Of course, it’s good for the team to win a lot, but if you rely on it to do business, it’s easy to reduce the number of spectators and sales of goods when the team can’t win very much. Therefore, it is important to have fans who support the team. Those fans are absolutely indispensable when thinking about sports business.
Therefore, I think that if sports fans can clarify the characteristics, sports teams can do “strong management” regardless of their performance, so I research it every day.

Graph representation methods are very useful for data analysis. Our research focuses on devising and developing new visualization methods to visually represent the characteristics of multivariate data and the characteristics of clusters.For example, we have proposed and developed expanded constellation graphs based on the concept of constellation graphs, and have examined its usefulness.
The figure below shows the flavor characteristics evaluated by applying the expanded constellation graph to the flavor data of Scotch whiskey. The graph shows that each cluster is clearly classified. In addition, the lines (paths) show the characteristics and trends of the data.

[Health promotion and lifelong sports]
The important thing is to keep exercising. Sports are also important from the perspective of release stress and mental health. Wearable devices have made it possible to measure heart rate and walking distance during exercise. I promote research that contributes to health promotion and lifelong sports.
[Choice reaction time and performance]
The study of choice tasks leads to improved sports performance. The study of reaction time improved prevent accidents. I am studying reaction time and selection tasks.
[Environmental temperature and physiological stress]
Physiological stress during exercise in a hot or cold environment is evaluated using indices such as heart rate and body temperature. I am studying against heatstroke and prevention of hypothermia.

Financial accounting is an accounting method that companies use to disclose information to the outside world. Since the information is disclosed to external stakeholders, which can be regarded as the company’s performance, the reliability of the information is very important. There are various mechanisms to ensure or enhance the reliability of financial information, and internal audits are one of them. So my research questions are “how do internal audits affect the quality of financial information?” and “what is the relationship between external and internal audits?”. I use statistical methods based on publicly available data from companies to answer those research questions.