• Korean Journal of Forensic Psychology
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.135-153
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• 2020

Identifiable victim effect refers to the tendency of greater sympathy and helping behavior to identifiable victims than to abstract, unidentifiable ones. This research tested whether this tendency also affects third-party's punishment and compensation judgments in jury context for public's legal judgments. In addition, through the Identifiable victim effect in such legal judgment, we intended to explain the effect of 'the bill named for victim', putting the victim's real name and identity at the forefront, which is aimed at strengthening the punishment of related crimes by gaining public attention and support. To do so, we conducted experiments with hypothetical traffic accident scenarios that controlled legal components while manipulating victim's identifying information. In experiment 1, each participant read a scenario of an anonymous victim (unidentifiable condition) or a nonanonymous victim that included personal information such as name and age (identifiable condition) and made judgments on the degree of punishment and compensation. The results showed no effect of identifiability on third-party's punishment and compensation judgments, but moderation effect of BJW was obtained in the identifiable condition. That is, those with higher BJW showed greater tendency of punishment and compensation for identifiable victims. In Experiment 2, we compared an anonymous victim (unidentifiable condition) against a well-conducted victim (positive condition) and ill-conducted victim (negative condition) to test the effects of victim's characteristics on punishment for offender and compensation for victims. The results showed lower compensation for an ill-conducted victim than for an anonymous one. In addition, across all conditions except for negative condition, participants made punishment and compensation judgments higher than the average judicial precedents of 10-point presented in the rating scale. This research showed that victim's characteristics other than legal components affects third-party's legal decision making. Furthermore, we interpreted third-party's tendency to impose higher punishment and compensation with effect of 'the bill named for victim' and proposed social and legal discussion for and future research.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.53-81
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• 2010

Brand experience has received much attention from considerable marketing research. When consumers consume and use brands, they are exposed to various specific brand-related stimuli. These brand-related stimuli include brand identity and brand communications(e.g., colors, shapes, designs, slogans, mascots, brand characters) components. Brakus, Schmitt, and Zarantonello(2009) conceptualized brand experience as subjective and internal consumer responses evoked by brand-related stimuli. They demonstrated that brand experience can be broken down into four dimensions(sensory, affective, intellectual, and behavioral). Because experiences result from stimulations and lead to pleasurable outcomes, we expect consumers to want to repeat theses experiences. That is, brand experiences, stored in consumer memory, should affect brand loyalty. Consumers with positive experiences should be more likely to buy a brand again and less likely to buy an alternative brand(Fournier 1998; Oliver 1997). Brand attachment, one of dimensions of the consumer-brand relationship, is defined as an emotional bond to the specific brand(Thomson, MacInnis, and Park 2005). Brand attachment is target-specific bond between the consumer and the specific brand. Thus, strong attachment is attended by a rich set of schema that link the brand to the consumer. Previous researches propose that brand attachments should affect consumers' commitment to the brand. Brand experience differs from affective construct such as brand attachment. Brand attachment is based on interaction between a consumer and the brand. In contrast, brand experience occurs whenever there is a direct and indirect interaction with the brand. Furthermore, brand experience is not an emotional relationship concept. Brakus et al.(2009) suggest that brand experience may result in brand attachment. This study aims to distinguish brand experience dimensions and investigate the effects of brand experience on brand attachment and brand commitment. We test research problems with data from 265 customers having brand experiences in various product categories by using multiple regression and structural equation model. The empirical results can be summarized as follows. First, the paths from affective, behavior, and intellectual experience to the brand attachment were found to be positively significant whereas the effect of sensory experience to brand attachment was not supported. In the consumer literature, sensory experiences for consumers are often equated with aesthetic pleasure. Over time, these pleasure experiences can affect consumer satisfaction. However, sensory pleasures are not linked to attachment such as consumers' strong emotional bond(i.e., hot affect). These empirical results confirms the results of previous studies. Second, brand attachment including passion and connection influences brand commitment positively but affection does not influence brand commitment. In marketing context, consumers with brand attachment have intention to have a willingness to stay with the relationship. The results also imply that consumers' emotional attachment is characterized by a set of brand experience dimensions and consumers who are emotionally attached to the brand are committed. The findings of this research contribute to develop differences between brand experience and brand attachment and to provide practical implications on the brand experience management. Recently, many brand managers have focused on short-term view. According to this study, we suggest that effective brand experience management requires taking a long-term view of marketing decisions.

• Journal of Venture Innovation
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.1-21
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• 2020

Recently, the emergence of new technologies caused by the Fourth Industrial Revolution caused a great change not only in the overall society but also in the retail industry. In the retail industry, unmanned stores based on new technologies have emerged, changing the consumption behavior of consumers. In particular, the global pandemic caused by COVID-19, which appeared in December 2019, raised social risks, and as a result of this, the beginning of the non-face-to-face era, interest in unmanned stores is increasing. In this study, the effects of benefits factors (perceived usefulness, perceived economics, perceived enjoyment, relative advantages) and sacrifice factors (perceived risk, technicality) perceived by unmanned store users on continuous use intention through perceived value. In addition, it is a study to test through empirical analysis what role the social risk from COVID-19 plays in the process of consumption through unmanned stores. The purpose of this study is to provide strategic implications for the activation of unmanned stores in the non-face-to-face era. In this study, a total of 293 copies of data were collected for users of unmanned stores for hypothesis testing. In addition, the collected data was analyzed using SPSS 21.0 and AMOS 21.0 statistical programs. The results of the study are summarized as follows. First, it was found that the perceived benefits (perceived usefulness, perceived economics, perceived playfulness, and relative advantages) of unmanned stores all had a significant positive effect on perceived value. Second, it was found that all perceived sacrifices (perceived risk, technicality) of unmanned stores had a significant negative effect on perceived value. Third, it was found that the perceived value of unmanned stores had a significant positive effect on the intention to continue use. Finally, the social risk from COVID-19 has been shown to play a moderating role when the perceived sacrifice of unmanned stores affects the perceived value.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.201-214
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• 2022

This study theoretically and empirically examined whether organizational communication mediates the effect of organizational learning culture perceived by members in the organization on task performance and contextual performance. Organizational learning culture is defined as a culture that is good at creating, acquiring, transferring, and modifying behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights. The hypothesis of this study is that the perceived organizational learning culture can increase performance through organizational communication between members. In particular, we measured communication within the organization into three types: upward, horizontal, and downward. These communications were set as mediating variables. In empirical studies, independent variables were perceived organizational learning culture, mediation variables were upward, horizontal and downward communication, and dependent variables were task performance and contextual performance. Hypothesis 1 is that the organizational learning culture will have a positive effect on employees' tasks and contextual performance. Hypothesis 2 is about the mediating effect of communication on the relationship between Hypothesis 1. In the empirical study, after verifying the validity and reliability of the research variables, correlation analysis and hypothesis verification were conducted. Hypothesis 1 was verified through regression analysis, and all detailed hypotheses were supported. To verify Hypothesis 2, we conducted a bootstrap test using process macro to separate the total, direct, and indirect effects and examine the significance of the indirect effects. As a result, Hypothesis 2 was partially supported. Downward communication mediated organizational learning culture and task and contextual performance, and horizontal communication mediated organizational learning culture and contextual performance. The mediating effect of upward communication was not significant. The results of this study contributed to the suggestion of implications, research limitations, and research directions. Organizational learning culture is the direction and intention of the organization to achieve its goals through the learning and growth of its members. By strengthening internal motivation, organizational members can take voluntary desirable actions that help groups and organizations as well as essential tasks given. since this relationship appears as a medium of downward communication, organizations can strengthen the relationship between organizational learning culture and performance through leadership education.

• Journal of the Korean Applied Science and Technology
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• v.40 no.4
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• pp.685-698
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• 2023

This study aimed to identify binge-eating behavior and food addiction in Korean population and to determine their associations with obesity, eating behaviors, mental health and cognitive characteristics. We collected clinical questionnaire scores related to eating problems (e.g. binge eating, food addiction, food cravings), mental health (e.g. depression), and cognitive functions (e.g. impulsivity, emotion regulation) in 257 Korean adults in the normal and the obese weight ranges. Binge-eating and food addiction were most frequent in obese women (binge-eating: 46.6%, food addiction: 29.3%) when we divided the participants into 4 groups depending on gender and obesity status. The independence test using the data with propensity score matching confirmed that binge-eating and food addiction were more prevalent in obese individuals. Finally, we constructed the logistic regression models using forward selection method to evaluate the influence of various clinical questionnaire scores on binge-eating and food addiction respectively. Binge-eating was significantly associated with the clinical scales of eating disorders, food craving, state anxiety, and emotion regulation (cognitive reappraisal) as well as food addiction. Food addiction demonstrated the significant effect of food craving, binge-eating, the interaction of obesity and age, and years of education. In conclusion, we found that binge-eating and food addiction are much more frequent in females and obese individuals. Both binge-eating and food addiction commonly involved eating problems (e.g. food craving), but there was difference in mental health and cognitive risk factors. Therefore, it is required to distinguish food addiction from binge-eating and investigate intrinsic and environmental risk factors for each pathology.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.57 no.1
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• pp.136-152
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• 2024

Purpose: A comprehensive evaluation item was developed to assess adolescent dietary habits and nutritional practices, considering food intake, eating behaviors, and food culture, such as social support and food environment. Methods: The 59 candidate items of the evaluation checklist were obtained based on the results of the eighth Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data, Korea Dietary Reference Intakes, dietary guidelines for adolescents, Youth Risk Behavior Survey data, national nutrition policies and dietary guidelines, and literature reviews. Four hundred and three middle and high school students residing in metropolitan areas participated in a survey using the 58-item checklist, which was selected through expert evaluation and content validity ratio analysis. The construct validity of the assessment tool for the quality of adolescent diets was assessed by exploratory factor analyses to determine if the checklist items were organized properly and whether the responses to each item were distributed adequately. Results: The Bartlett sphericity test was significant for each area (p <0.001), and the eigen values were greater than one. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin and cumulative proportions by areas were food intake (0.765 and 56.8%, respectively), eating behaviors (0.544 and 64.8%, respectively), and food environment (0.699 and 62.4%, respectively). Twenty-two checklists were determined for the final evaluation items for the adolescents' dietary habits and nutritional practices and were categorized into three distinct factors: food intake (10 items), eating behaviors (4 items), and food environment (8 items). Conclusion: The evaluation items for adolescent dietary habits and nutritional practices is a useful checklist for easily and quickly assessing the dietary qualities and reflecting Korean adolescents and their food environmental factors related to a sustainable diet.

• The Journal of Korean Society for School & Community Health Education
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.27-44
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• 2024

Objectives: This study aimed to provide foundational data for preventing adolescents smoking by analyzing the relationship between adolescents' lifestyles and smoking experiences and identifying influencing factors. Methods: Secondary data analysis was conducted using the 17th (2021) Youth Health Behavior Survey data, encompassing 54,848 students from 796 schools. Variables included general characteristics, smoking status, lifestyle habits, physical activity, sleep patterns, and stress perception. Frequency analysis was used to examine general characteristics, while further analysis employed frequency analysis and the Pearson Chi-square test to compare lifestyle differences based on smoking presence. Multinomial logistic regression analysis was employed to determine factors influencing smoking experience, with IBM SPSS Statistics 28 used for all analyses at a significance level of p<.05. Results: Analysis revealed with general characteristics that the group with smoking experience exhibited a higher proportion of male students (67.4%) compared to the non-smoking group (50.1%) (p<.001). Analysis revealed that the smoking group was more likely to skip breakfast (27.7%), not consume fruit (17.8%), and consume fast food more than three times daily (0.9%). Furthermore, a higher percentage of smokers engaged in 60 minutes or more of breathless physical activity (8.4%) seven times a week, reported insufficient fatigue recovery through sleep (21.6%), and experienced very severe normal stress (17.2%) (p<.001). Analysis of the relationship between lifestyle and smoking indicated increased likelihood of smoking with zero breakfast consumption (OR=1.759, p<.001) and increased fruit consumption (OR=1.921, p<.001), while zero fast food consumption decreased smoking likelihood (OR=0.206, p<.001). Adequate sleep-related fatigue recovery reduced smoking likelihood (OR=0.458, p<.001), whereas increased stress elevated it (OR=1.260, p<.05). Conclusion: Adolescents' lifestyle habits significantly correlated with their smoking experiences, highlighting the necessity of considering lifestyle factors in smoking prevention strategies. This study provides crucial insights for promoting healthy lifestyle changes to prevent smoking among youth.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.111-137
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• 2010

The basic purpose of this study is to investigate perceived quality and service personal value affecting the result of long-term relationship between service buyers and suppliers. This research presented a constructive model(perceived quality affecting the service personal value and the moderate effect of NFC) in the on off line and then propose the research model base on prior researches and studies about relationships among components of service. Data were gathered from respondents who visit at the education service market. For this study, Data were analyzed by AMOS 7.0. We integrate the literature on services marketing with researches on personal values and perceived quality. The SERPVAL scale presented here allows for the creation of a common ground for assessing service personal values, giving a clear understanding of the key value dimensions behind service choice and usage. It will lead to a focus of future research in services marketing, extending knowledge in the field and stimulating further empirical research on service personal values. At the managerial level, as a tool the SERPVAL scale should allow practitioners to evaluate and improve the value of a service, and consequently, to define strategies and actions to address services for customers based on their fundamental personal values. Through qualitative and empirical research, we find that the service quality construct conforms to the structure of a second-order factor model that ties service quality perceptions to distinct and actionable dimensions: outcome, interaction, and environmental quality. In turn, each has two subdimensions that define the basis of service quality perceptions. The authors further suggest that for each of these subdimensions to contribute to improved service quality perceptions, the quality received by consumers must be perceived to be reliable, responsive, and empathetic. Although the service personal value may be found in researches that explore individual values and their consequences for consumer behavior, there is no established operationalization of a SERPVAL scale. The inexistence of an established scale, duly adapted in order to understand and analyze personal values behind services usage, exposes the need of a measurement scale with such a purpose. This need has to be rooted, however, in a conceptualization of the construct being scaled. Service personal values can be defined as a customer's overall assessment of the use of a service based on the perception of what is achieved in terms of his own personal values. As consumer behaviors serve to show an individual's values, the use of a service can also be a way to fulfill and demonstrate consumers'personal values. In this sense, a service can provide more to the customer than its concrete and abstract attributes at both the attribute and the quality levels, and more than its functional consequences at the value level. Both values and services literatures agree, that personal value is the highest-level concept, followed by instrumental values, attitudes and finally by product attributes. Purchasing behaviors are agreed to be the end result of these concepts' interaction, with personal values taking a major role in the final decision process. From both consumers' and practitioners' perspectives, values are extremely relevant, as they are desirable goals that serve as guiding principles in people's lives. While building on previous research, we propose to assess service personal values through three broad groups of individual dimensions; at the self-oriented level, we use (1) service value to peaceful life (SVPL) and, at the social-oriented level, we use (2) service value to social recognition (SVSR), and (3) service value to social integration (SVSI). Service value to peaceful life is our first dimension. This dimension emerged as a combination of values coming from the RVS scale, a scale built specifically to assess general individual values. If a service promotes a pleasurable life, brings or improves tranquility, safety and harmony, then its user recognizes the value of this service. Generally, this service can improve the user's pleasure of life, since it protects or defends the consumer from threats to life or pressures on it. While building upon both the LOV scale, a scale built specifically to assess consumer values, and the RVS scale for individual values, we develop the other two dimensions: SVSR and SVSI. The roles of social recognition and social integration to improve service personal value have been seriously neglected. Social recognition derives its outcome utility from its predictive utility. When applying this underlying belief to our second dimension, SVSR, we assume that people use a service while taking into consideration the content of what is delivered. Individuals consider whether the service aids in gaining respect from others, social recognition and status, as well as whether it allows achieving a more fulfilled and stimulating life, which might then be revealed to others. People also tend to engage in behavior that receives social recognition and to avoid behavior that leads to social disapproval, and this contributes to an individual's social integration. This leads us to the third dimension, SVSI, which is based on the fact that if the consumer perceives that a service strengthens friendships, provides the possibility of becoming more integrated in the group, or promotes better relationships at the social, professional or family levels, then the service will contribute to social integration, and naturally the individual will recognize personal value in the service. Most of the research in business values deals with individual values. However, to our knowledge, no study has dealt with assessing overall personal values as well as their dimensions in a service context. Our final results show that the scales adapted from the Schwartz list were excluded. A possible explanation is that although Schwartz builds on Rokeach work in order to explore individual values, its dimensions might be especially focused on analyzing societal values. As we are looking for individual dimensions, this might explain why the values inspired by the Schwartz list were excluded from the model. The hierarchical structure of the final scale presented in this paper also presents theoretical implications. Although we cannot claim to definitively capture the dimensions of service personal values, we believe that we come close to capturing these overall evaluations because the second-order factor extracts the underlying commonality among dimensions. In addition to obtaining respondents' evaluations of the dimensions, the second-order factor model captures the common variance among these dimensions, reflecting the respondents' overall assessment of service personal values. Towards this fact, we expect that the service personal values conceptualization and measurement scale presented here contributes to both business values literature and the service marketing field, allowing for the delineation of strategies for adding value to services. This new scale also presents managerial implications. The SERPVAL dimensions give some guidance on how to better pursue a highly service-oriented business strategy. Indeed, the SERPVAL scale can be used for benchmarking purposes, as this scale can be used to identify whether or not a firms' marketing strategies are consistent with consumers' expectations. Managerial assessment of the personal values of a service might be extremely important because it allows managers to better understand what customers want or value. Thus, this scale allows us to identify what services are really valuable to the final consumer; providing knowledge for making choices regarding which services to include. Traditional approaches have focused their attention on service attributes (as quality) and service consequences(as service value), but personal values may be an important set of variables to be considered in understanding what attracts consumers to a certain service. By using the SERPVAL scale to assess the personal values associated with a services usage, managers may better understand the reasons behind services' usage, so that they may handle them more efficiently. While testing nomological validity, our empirical findings demonstrate that the three SERPVAL dimensions are positively and significantly associated with satisfaction. Additionally, while service value to social integration is related only with loyalty, service value to peaceful life is associated with both loyalty and repurchase intent. It is also interesting and surprising that service value to social recognition appears not to be significantly linked with loyalty and repurchase intent. A possible explanation is that no mobile service provider has yet emerged in the market as a luxury provider. All of the Portuguese providers are still trying to capture market share by means of low-end pricing. This research has implications for consumers as well. As more companies seek to build relationships with their customers, consumers are easily able to examine whether these relationships provide real value or not to their own lives. The selection of a strategy for a particular service depends on its customers' personal values. Being highly customer-oriented means having a strong commitment to customers, trying to create customer value and understanding customer needs. Enhancing service distinctiveness in order to provide a peaceful life, increase social recognition and gain a better social integration are all possible strategies that companies may pursue, but the one to pursue depends on the outstanding personal values held by the service customers. Data were gathered from 284 respondents in the korean discount store and online shopping mall market. This research proposed 3 hypotheses on 6 latent variables and tested through structural equation modeling. 6 alternative measurements were compared through statistical significance test of the 6 paths of research model and the overall fitting level of structural equation model. and the result was successful. and Perceived quality more positively influences service personal value when NFC is high than when no NFC is low in the off-line market. The results of the study indicate that service quality is properly modeled as an antecedent of service personal value. We consider the research and managerial implications of the study and its limitations. In sum, by knowing the dimensions a consumer takes into account when choosing a service, a better understanding of purchasing behaviors may be realized, guiding managers toward customers expectations. By defining strategies and actions that address potential problems with the service personal values, managers might ultimately influence their firm's performance. we expect to contribute to both business values and service marketing literatures through the development of the service personal value. At a time when marketing researchers are challenged to provide research with practical implications, it is also believed that this framework may be used by managers to pursue service-oriented business strategies while taking into consideration what customers value.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.69-98
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• 2009

We investigated what factors motivate gamers to participate in a guild and why they continue to be engaged as members of the guild. We find that, based on the result of focus group interviews with MMORPG gamers, social support and self-esteem factors play important roles. Considering both prior research and the focus group interviews we have conducted, we define social support and character control as independent variables. Character identity, guild identity, and self-esteem are proposed as mediating variables while guild flow and game loyalty as dependent variables. Accordingly, we develop the research model and hypotheses, and verify them empirically. Based on our experiences of playing the WoW game, we proposed a research model and conducted focus-group interviews (FGIs). FGIs involve formulating a hypothesis and then collecting some relevant data. FGIs were conducted face-to-face with students of C University in Korea. We formulated structured interview schedules, and the questions were based on our research variables and personal experiences. The questions for the interviews encompassed the following areas: (a) the demographic characteristics of the focus group; (b) the number of years for which respondents had played online games; (c) the motive for starting a game; (d) the number of game-characters assumed by each gamer; (e) the type of game played; and (f) other issues such as the reasons for involvement in the play, the willingness to reuse the game in case new versions were released, etc. On average, it took two hours to interview each of three groups. A primary set of FGIs was conducted with three groups on the premise that there would be some differences caused by character race (Horde vs. Alliance) or by playable server (Normal vs. Combat). With respect to the manner of playing, we found that guild members shared information, felt a sense of belonging, and played computer games for quite a long time through the guild; however, they did not undergo these experiences when playing alone. Gamers who belonged to a specific guild helped other players without expecting compensation for that, freely shared information about the game, gave away items for free, and more generous with other members who made mistakes. The guild members were aware of the existence other members and experienced a sense of belonging through interactions with, and evaluations from, other players. It was clear that social support was shown within the guild and that it played an important role as a major research variable. Based on the results of the first FGIs, a second set of in-depth FGIs was carried out with a focus on the psychology of the individual within the guild and the social community of the guild. The second set of FGIs also focused on the guild's offline meetings. Gamers, over all, recognize the necessity of joining a community, not only off-line but also online world of the guild. They admit that the guild is important for them to easily and conveniently enjoy playing online computer games. The active behavior and positive attitudes of existing guild members can motivate new members of the guild to adapt themselves to the guild environment. They then adopt the same behaviors and attitudes of established guild members. In this manner, the new members of the guild strengthen the bonds with other gamers while feeling a sense of belonging, and developing social identity, thereby. It was discovered that the interaction among guild members and the social support encouraged new gamers to quickly develop a sense of social identity and increase their self-esteem. The guild seemed to play the role of socializing gamers. Sometimes, even in the real world, the guild members helped one another; therefore, the features of the guild also spilled over to the offline environment. We intend to use self-esteem, which was found through the second set of FGIs, as an important research variable. To collect data, an online survey was designed with a questionnaire to be completed by WoW gamers, who belong to a guild. The survey was registered on the best three domestic game-sites: 'WoW playforum,' 'WoW gamemeca,' and 'Wow invent.' The selected items to be measured in the questionnaire were decided based on prior research and data from FGIs. To verify the content of the questionnaire, we carried out a pilot test with the same participants to point out ambiguous questions as a way to ensure maximum accuracy of the survey result. A total of 244 responses were analyzed from the 250 completed questionnaires. The SEM analysis was used to test goodness-of-fit of the model. As a result, we found important results as follows: First, according to the statistics, social support had statistically significant impacts on character control, character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Second, character control had significant effects on character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Third, character identity shows its clear impact on self-esteem and game loyalty. Fourth, guild identity affected self-esteem, guild flow and game loyalty. Fifth, self-esteem had a positive influence on the guild flow. These days, the number of virtual community is rising along with its significance largely because of the nature of the online games. Accordingly, this study is designed to clarify the psychological relationship between gamers within the guild that has been generally established by gamers to play online games together. This study focuses on the relationships in which social support influences guild flow or game loyalty through character control, character identity, guild identity, and self-esteem, which are present within a guild in the MMORPG game environment. The study results are as follows. First, the effects of social support on character control, character identity, guild identity and self-esteem are proven to be statistically significant. It was found that character control improves character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Among the seven variables, social support, which is derived from FGIs, plays an important role in this study. With the active support of other guild members, gamers can improve their ability to develop good characters and to control them. Second, character identity has a positive effect on self-esteem and game loyalty, while guild identity has a significant effect on self-esteem, guild flow and game loyalty. Self-esteem affects guild flow. It was found that the higher the character and guild identities become, the greater the self-esteem is established. Contrary to the findings of prior research, our study results indicate that the relationship between character identity and guild flow is not significant. Rather, it was found that character identity directly affects game players' loyalty. Even though the character identity had no direct effect on increasing guild flow, it has indirectly affected guild flow through self-esteem. The significant relationship between self-esteem and guild flow indicates that gamers achieve flow, i.e., a feeling of pleasure and excitement through social support. Several important implications of this study should be noted. First, both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to conduct this study. Through FGIs, it was observed that both social support and self-esteem are important variables. Second, because guilds had been rarely studied, this research is expected to play an important role in the online community. Third, according to the result, six hypotheses (H1, H5, H6, H7, H8, and H11) setup based on FGIs, were statistically significant; thus, we can suggest the corresponding relationships among the variables as a guideline for follow-up research. Our research is significant as it has following implications: first, the social support of the guild members is important when establishing character control, character identity, guildidentity and self-esteem. It is also a major variable that affects guild flow and game loyalty. Second, character control when improved by social support shows notable influence on the development of character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Third, character identity and guild identity are major factors to help establish gamers' own self-esteem. Fourth, character identity affects guild flow through self-esteem and game loyalty. The gamers usually express themselves through characters; the higher character identity is, the more loyalty a gamer has. Fifth, guild identity, established within the guild, has clear effects on self-esteem, guild flow and game loyalty. Sixth, qualitative and quantitative methods are employed to conduct this study. Based on the results of focus group interviews and SEM analysis, we find that the social support by guild members and psychological factors are significant in strengthening the flow of guild and loyalty to the game. As such, game developers should provide some extra functions for guild community, through which gamers can play online games in collaboration with one another. Also, we suggest that positive self-esteem which is built up through social support can help gamers achieve higher level of flow and satisfaction, which will consequently contribute to minimizing the possibility for the players to develop negative attitude toward the guild they belong to.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.71-110
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• 2010

1. Introduction Today Internet is recognized as an important way for the transaction of products and services. According to the data surveyed by the National Statistical Office, the on-line transaction in 2007 for a year, 15.7656 trillion, shows a 17.1%(2.3060 trillion won) increase over last year, of these, the amount of B2C has been increased 12.0%(10.2258 trillion won). Like this, because the entry barrier of on-line market of Korea is low, many retailers could easily enter into the market. So the bigger its scale is, but on the other hand, the tougher its competition is. Particularly due to the Internet and innovation of IT, the existing market has been changed into the perfect competitive market(Srinivasan, Rolph & Kishore, 2002). In the early years of on-line business, they think that the main reason for success is a moderate price, they are awakened to its importance of on-line service quality with tough competition. If it's not sure whether customers can be provided with what they want, they can use the Web sites, perhaps they can trust their products that had been already bought or not, they have a doubt its viability(Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Malhotra, 2005). Customers can directly reserve and issue their air tickets irrespective of place and time at the Web sites of travel agencies or airlines, but its empirical studies about these Web sites for reserving and issuing air tickets are insufficient. Therefore this study goes on for following specific objects. First object is to measure service quality and service recovery of Web sites for reserving and issuing air tickets. Second is to look into whether above on-line service quality and on-line service recovery have an impact on overall service quality. Third is to seek for the relation with overall service quality and customer satisfaction, then this customer satisfaction and loyalty intention. 2. Theoretical Background 2.1 On-line Service Quality Barnes & Vidgen(2000; 2001a; 2001b; 2002) had invented the tool to measure Web sites' quality four times(called WebQual). The WebQual 1.0, Step one invented a measuring item for information quality based on QFD, and this had been verified by students of UK business school. The Web Qual 2.0, Step two invented for interaction quality, and had been judged by customers of on-line bookshop. The WebQual 3.0, Step three invented by consolidating the WebQual 1.0 for information quality and the WebQual2.0 for interactionquality. It includes 3-quality-dimension, information quality, interaction quality, site design, and had been assessed and confirmed by auction sites(e-bay, Amazon, QXL). Furtheron, through the former empirical studies, the authors changed sites quality into usability by judging that usability is a concept how customers interact with or perceive Web sites and It is used widely for accessing Web sites. By this process, WebQual 4.0 was invented, and is consist of 3-quality-dimension; information quality, interaction quality, usability, 22 items. However, because WebQual 4.0 is focusing on technical part, it's usable at the Website's design part, on the other hand, it's not usable at the Web site's pleasant experience part. Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Malhorta(2002; 2005) had invented the measure for measuring on-line service quality in 2002 and 2005. The study in 2002 divided on-line service quality into 5 dimensions. But these were not well-organized, so there needed to be studied again totally. So Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Malhorta(2005) re-worked out the study about on-line service quality measure base on 2002's study and invented E-S-QUAL. After they invented preliminary measure for on-line service quality, they made up a question for customers who had purchased at amazon.com and walmart.com and reassessed this measure. And they perfected an invention of E-S-QUAL consists of 4 dimensions, 22 items of efficiency, system availability, fulfillment, privacy. Efficiency measures assess to sites and usability and others, system availability measures accurate technical function of sites and others, fulfillment measures promptness of delivering products and sufficient goods and others and privacy measures the degree of protection of data about their customers and so on. 2.2 Service Recovery Service industries tend to minimize the losses by coping with service failure promptly. This responses of service providers to service failure mean service recovery(Kelly & Davis, 1994). Bitner(1990) went on his study from customers' view about service providers' behavior for customers to recognize their satisfaction/dissatisfaction at service point. According to them, to manage service failure successfully, exact recognition of service problem, an apology, sufficient description about service failure and some tangible compensation are important. Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Malhorta(2005) approached the service recovery from how to measure, rather than how to manage, and moved to on-line market not to off-line, then invented E-RecS-QUAL which is a measuring tool about on-line service recovery. 2.3 Customer Satisfaction The definition of customer satisfaction can be divided into two points of view. First, they approached customer satisfaction from outcome of comsumer. Howard & Sheth(1969) defined satisfaction as 'a cognitive condition feeling being rewarded properly or improperly for their sacrifice.' and Westbrook & Reilly(1983) also defined customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction as 'a psychological reaction to the behavior pattern of shopping and purchasing, the display condition of retail store, outcome of purchased goods and service as well as whole market.' Second, they approached customer satisfaction from process. Engel & Blackwell(1982) defined satisfaction as 'an assessment of a consistency in chosen alternative proposal and their belief they had with them.' Tse & Wilton(1988) defined customer satisfaction as 'a customers' reaction to discordance between advance expectation and ex post facto outcome.' That is, this point of view that customer satisfaction is process is the important factor that comparing and assessing process what they expect and outcome of consumer. Unlike outcome-oriented approach, process-oriented approach has many advantages. As process-oriented approach deals with customers' whole expenditure experience, it checks up main process by measuring one by one each factor which is essential role at each step. And this approach enables us to check perceptual/psychological process formed customer satisfaction. Because of these advantages, now many studies are adopting this process-oriented approach(Yi, 1995). 2.4 Loyalty Intention Loyalty has been studied by dividing into behavioral approaches, attitudinal approaches and complex approaches(Dekimpe et al., 1997). In the early years of study, they defined loyalty focusing on behavioral concept, behavioral approaches regard customer loyalty as "a tendency to purchase periodically within a certain period of time at specific retail store." But the loyalty of behavioral approaches focuses on only outcome of customer behavior, so there are someone to point the limits that customers' decision-making situation or process were neglected(Enis & Paul, 1970; Raj, 1982; Lee, 2002). So the attitudinal approaches were suggested. The attitudinal approaches consider loyalty contains all the cognitive, emotional, voluntary factors(Oliver, 1997), define the customer loyalty as "friendly behaviors for specific retail stores." However these attitudinal approaches can explain that how the customer loyalty form and change, but cannot say positively whether it is moved to real purchasing in the future or not. This is a kind of shortcoming(Oh, 1995). 3. Research Design 3.1 Research Model Based on the objects of this study, the research model derived is