• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.65-96
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• 2012

Brand has received much attention from considerable marketing research. When consumers consume product or services, they are exposed to a lot of brand related stimuli. These contain brand personality, brand experience, brand identity, brand communications and so on. A special kind of new crisis occasionally confronting companies' brand management today is the brand related rumor. An important influence on consumers' purchase decision making is the word-of-mouth spread by other consumers and most decisions are influenced by other's recommendations. In light of this influence, firms have reasonable reason to study and understand consumer-to-consumer communication such as brand rumor. The importance of brand rumor to marketers is increasing as the number of internet user and SNS(social network service) site grows. Due to the development of internet technology, people can spread rumors without the limitation of time, space and place. However relatively few studies have been published in marketing journals and little is known about brand rumors in the marketplace. The study of rumor has a long history in all major social science. But very few studies have dealt with the antecedents and consequences of any kind of brand rumor. Rumor has been generally described as a story or statement in general circulation without proper confirmation or certainty as to fact. And it also can be defined as an unconfirmed proposition, passed along from people to people. Rosnow(1991) claimed that rumors were transmitted because people needed to explain ambiguous and uncertain events and talking about them reduced associated anxiety. Especially negative rumors are believed to have the potential to devastate a company's reputation and relations with customers. From the perspective of marketer, negative rumors are considered harmful and extremely difficult to control in general. It is becoming a threat to a company's sustainability and sometimes leads to negative brand image and loss of customers. Thus there is a growing concern that these negative rumors can damage brands' reputations and lead them to financial disaster too. In this study we aimed to distinguish antecedents of brand rumor transmission and investigate the effects of brand rumor characteristics on rumor spread intention. We also found key components in personal acceptance of brand rumor. In contextualist perspective, we tried to unify the traditional psychological and sociological views. In this unified research approach we defined brand rumor's characteristics based on five major variables that had been found to influence the process of rumor spread intention. The five factors of usefulness, source credibility, message credibility, worry, and vividness, encompass multi level elements of brand rumor. We also selected product involvement as a control variable. To perform the empirical research, imaginary Korean 'Kimch' brand and related contamination rumor was created and proposed. Questionnaires were collected from 178 Korean samples. Data were collected from college students who have been experienced the focal product. College students were regarded as good subjects because they have a tendency to express their opinions in detail. PLS(partial least square) method was adopted to analyze the relations between variables in the equation model. The most widely adopted causal modeling method is LISREL. However it is poorly suited to deal with relatively small data samples and can yield not proper solutions in some cases. PLS has been developed to avoid some of these limitations and provide more reliable results. To test the reliability using SPSS 16 s/w, Cronbach alpha was examined and all the values were appropriate showing alpha values between .802 and .953. Subsequently, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted successfully. And structural equation modeling has been used to analyze the research model using smartPLS(ver. 2.0) s/w. Overall, R² of adoption of rumor is .476 and R² of intention of rumor transmission is .218. The overall model showed a satisfactory fit. The empirical results can be summarized as follows. According to the results, the variables of brand rumor characteristic such as source credibility, message credibility, worry, and vividness affect argument strength of rumor. And argument strength of rumor also affects rumor intention. On the other hand, the relationship between perceived usefulness and argument strength of rumor is not significant. The moderating effect of product involvement on the relations between argument strength of rumor and rumor W.O.M intention is not supported neither. Consequently this study suggests some managerial and academic implications. We consider some implications for corporate crisis management planning, PR and brand management. This results show marketers that rumor is a critical factor for managing strong brand assets. Also for researchers, brand rumor should become an important thesis of their interests to understand the relationship between consumer and brand. Recently many brand managers and marketers have focused on the short-term view. They just focused on strengthen the positive brand image. According to this study we suggested that effective brand management requires managing negative brand rumors with a long-term view of marketing decisions.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.54 no.1
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• pp.1-24
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• 1981

Kangweon-Do is rich in sightseeing resources. There are three sightseeing areas;first, mountain area including Seolak and Ohdae National Parks, and chiak Provincial Park; second eastern coastal area; third lake area including the watersheds of North Han River. In this paper, several methods of forestation were studied for landscaping the North Han River watersheds centering around Chounchon. In Chunchon lake complex, there are four lakes; Uiam, Chunchon, Soyang and Paro from down to upper stream. The total surface area of the above four lakes is $14.4km^2$ the total pondage of them 4,155 million $m^3$, the total generation of electric power of them 410 thousand Kw, and the total forest area bordering on them $1,208km^2$. The bordering forest consists of planned management forest ($745km^2$) and non-planned management forest ($463km^2$). The latter is divided into green belt zone, natural conservation area, and protection forest. The forest in green belt amounts to $177km^2$ and centers around the 10km radios from Chunchon. The forest in natural conservation area amounts to $165km^2$, which is established within 2km sight range from the Soyang-lake sides. Protection forest surrounding the lakes is $121km^2$ There are many scenic places, recreation gardens, cultural goods and ruins in this lake complex, which are the same good tourist resources as lakes and forest. The forest encirelng the lakes has the poor average growing stock of $15m^3/ha$, because 70% of the forest consists of the young plantation of 1 to 2 age class. The ration of the needle-leaved forest, the broad-leaved forest and the mixed forest in 35:37:28. From the standpoint of ownership, the forest consists of national forest (36%), provincial forest (14%), Gun forest (5%) and private forest(45%). The greater part of the forest soil, originated from granite and gneiss, is much liable to weathering. Because the surface soil is mostly sterile, the fertilization for improving the soil quality is strongly urged. Considering the above-mentioned, the forestation methods for improving landscape of the North Han River Watersheds are suggested as follows: 1) The mature-stage forest should be induced by means of fertilizing and tendering, as the forest in this area is the young plantation with poor soil. 2) The bare land should be afforested by planting the rapid growing species, such as rigida pine, alder, and etc. 3) The bare land in the canyon with moderate moist and comparatively rich soil should be planted with Korean-pine, larch, ro fir. 4) Japaness-pine stand should be changed into Korean-pine, fir, spruce or hemlock stand from ravine to top gradually, because the Japanese-pine has poor capacity of water conservation and great liability to pine gall midge. 5) Present hard-wood forest, consisting of miscellaneous trees comparatively less valuable from the point of wood quality and scenerity, should be change into oak, maple, fraxinus-rhynchophylla, birch or juglan stand which is comparatively more valuable. 6) In the mountain foot within the sight-range, stands should be established with such species as cherry, weeping willow, white poplar, machilus, maiden-hair tree, juniper, chestnut or apricot. 7) The regeneration of some broad-leaved forests should be induced to the middle forest type, leading to the harmonious arrangement of the two storied forest and the coppice. 8) For the preservation of scenery, the reproduction of the soft-wood forest should be done under the selection method or the shelter-wood system. 9) Mixed forest should be regenerated under the middle forest system with upper needle-leaved forest and lower broad-leaved forest. In brief, the nature's mysteriousness should be conserved by combining the womanly elegance of the lakes and the manly grandeur of the forest.