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This study examined in detail the Japanese system of redressing consumers' losses and the overall consumer administrative system and compared them with the Korean counterpart to seek for a direction of reforming the systems. Several policy suggestions could be made as follows to activate the systems and improve the performances of the consumer administration in both Japan and Korea. First, in Japan, consumer center must be efficiently operated while private consumer groups, firms, consumer agencies and other organizations must actively join to actively redress consumers' losses and implement other consumer policies. Second, in Korea, regional consumer policies are weak so that they must learn Japanese well-developed regional consumer administration system by examining their current development, strengths, and weaknesses. Third, working conditions must be urgently improved, increasing the number of consumer counselors who are involved in consumer policies as well as to guarantee minimum level of their payment. On the other hand, the trend of hiring married and old employees being responsible for implementing consumer policies in Japan must be improved. Fourth, divisions of works in consumer policies among consumer groups as well as their specialization in Korea are necessary. Finally, as counseling of consumers through internet were not available in Japan, that type of counseling must introduce and become more popular in the future.

Financial planning in the United States has evolved since 1980 from a field comprised of specialists, such as insurance agents, bankers, accountants, and stock brokers, offering particular services to clients, to the situation today, where most professionals offering financial services to households market themselves as comprehensive financial planners. The breadth of knowledge required for financial planning can be seen in the 106 topics covered by the Certified Financial Planner(CFP) Exam. This study reviews the actual conditions of financial planning in the U.S. including suppliers of financial services to household, the philosophy of financial planning, and the financial planning process as described by the CFP Board. Also, this study discusses related research about problems and challenges faced by households in financial planning in the U.S.

This study compared household''s investment behaviors over consumer''s ages before and after the economic crisis using 1995 and 2000 National Survey of Family Income and Expenditure in korea. Household''s investment behaviors were compared in terms of household''s financial statements, amounts and proportions invested in various assets, and rate of return on investments. The proportion invested in securities of all households. In terms of the proportion invested, consumers under 40s increased the proportion invested in insurance while consumers over 50s increased the proportion invested in savings and trusts in 1995 than in 2000. Consumers of all ages increased the proportion invested in securities in 2000 than in 1995. Young households had higher rate of return in 1995 while old households had higher rate of return in 2000.

Recognizing a tremendous increase in the Internet users and popularity of E-learning through the Internet, this study attempted to analyze interactive financial education web sites for children. Using meta search engines and major search engines, interactive financial education web sites identified based on the three criteria and analyzed in terms of the appropriateness for specific age groups, the coverage of contents related to the basic knowledge for financial literacy, and the interactive activities. The results showed that financial education web sites for children were needed to be improved in terms of both quantity and quality. The study also provides a guideline how to search for an appropriate financial education web sites for children when parents want teach about money to their children.

The purpose of this study was to compare the consumers'' satisfactions between those who prefer internet shopping and those who prefer CATV home shopping. This study examined both on-purchase satisfactions and post-purchase satisfactions. For on-purchase satisfactions, this study investigated informational satisfactions, convenience satisfactions, and price satisfactions, and for the post-purchase satisfactions, it examined overall satisfactions, delivery-related, and exchange or refund related satisfactions. The data(n=376) were obtained from a questionnaire. The data included 185 consumers of internet shopping, and 182 consumers of TV home shopping, and were analyzed by t-tests or chi-square test to compare those consumers'' characteristics and satisfactions. The findings of this study are as follows: First, men aged 20s and those who had higher education, higher incomes were more likely to prefer internet shopping. Second, those who like TV home shopping were likely to search just one channel and to use less than 30 minutes to decide to purchase. Third, generally, those who prefer internet shopping showed higher scores of on-purchase satisfactions, and overall post-purchase satisfactions. However, TV home shopping consumers had higher scores of delivery-related satisfactions.

This study attempted to examine the employment instability on consumer''s use of credit as a financing medium. The purpose of this study was 1) to examine the effect of employment related factors on consumers'' use of credit; 2) to compare the results between the two different economic situations. A conceptual framework was developed based on the permanent income hypothesis, family stress theory, and the previous empirical studies. Using data on working households ih the 1992 and 1998 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), double-hurdle analyses were conducted. The results suggested that employment related factors that measured employment stability were significantly related to the likelihood of having an outstanding balance on their credit account but were not the influential factors in determining the amount of the outstanding balance. Among other factors, resources factor played the most significant role in determining both the likelihood of having an outstanding balance and the amount of the balance. Although the 1992 and 1998 data represent economic downturn and economic prosperous period, the effects of the factors including employment instability factors were similar between the two periods. This imply that employment instability has increased even in the economic prosperous period. From the findings, several implications for policy makers, credit industry, and financial educators were suggested.

This study analyze using pattern of the Korean elderly leisure time to know their leisure lifestyle. In order to do this study, we analysed the time use dairy which were collected by Korean National Statistical Office in 1999 and analysis of data was done through mean of time, percentage of acting people hourly. The result of this study were as follows : 1) The elderly spend leisure time average 6 hours 34 minute in a day and enjoy leisure activities from A.M. 11:00 to P.M. 12:00 and from P.M. 8:00 to P.M:. 10:00 mainly. 2) The elderly spend leisure time for acquaintance, using mass media, sports leisure activity and dilettante life. Especially the elderly associate with more others than their family, use more TV than others and spend time for break and amusement as dilettante life.