Many companies build information systems that support their business activities using business application products (Business Application Product: following BAP). Introducing BAPs into companies as business application tools is in many cases more difficult than introducing Information Technology tools as personal uses. Therefore, while some BAPs, such as SaaS-type customer relationship management and robotic process automation, have been widely adopted by companies, some BAPs have been introduced into companies only a small number of cases. This study examined the factors that contribute to the widespread use of BAPs by comparing two sets of old and new BAPs with the same purpose of use. The results suggested that one of the factors behind the widespread use of BAPs is that they are designed to enable information system users to become information system builders themselves and to solve management issues by incorporating technological innovations.

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The purpose of this paper is to examine whether restaurant customers percept food serving robots in restaurants positively or negatively. Comments on an Internet article about food service robots were analyzed using text mining methods of morphological analysis and co-occurrence networks analysis. By scraping 518 comments on an article, 10% of the comments were found to be positive, 54% negative, and 36% neutral. Positive comments indicated the expectation that new jobs would be created by the introduction of food serving robots, while negative comments were concerned about the safety of the food servicing robot’s operation.

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In this study, we compared the general perception of technical intern training programs with the actual situation, and made suggestions regarding issues in the programs. The research methods of this study were text mining, network analysis, and tabulation of questionnaires. The results showed that general people have a negative perception of technical intern training programs in terms of its divergence from its original purpose and inexpensive wages. On the other hand, the actual situation on the ground was similar, indicating that there is no significant difference between the perception and the actual situation. Therefore, we concluded that it is necessary to renew the system.

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It is important to understand how household consumption expenditures change when a recession occurs. In this study, the breakdowns of consumption expenditures before (boom period) and during the spread of COVID-19 infection (recession period) were systematically analyzed using open data from Oita City, Japan. In addition, a hierarchical and non-hierarchical cluster analysis were conducted to analyze how the breakdown of consumption expenditures changes when a recession occurs. The results showed that while consumption expenditures on food, utilities, and furniture and household goods did not differ significantly between boom and recession periods, other consumption expenditures, such as allowance and entertainment, declined significantly when a recession occurred, leading to a decline in total consumption. Furthermore, it was found that the breakdown of consumption expenditures changes significantly for households excluding working households compared to working households when a recession occurs, while the breakdown of consumption expenditures during a recession is not significantly different for working households and households excluding working households.

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