• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.695-723
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• 2018

Recently, extreme weather due to climate change has become more frequent, and increase of fine dust has worsen air quality in Korea. Therefore, not only negative perception on coal-fired power generation is dominant, but also the social acceptance of nuclear power generation declines. This study aims at deriving consumer preferences on the mid and long term power mix with various energy sources. Willingness to pay for each generation source was estimated and the preference heterogeneity of consumers was examined by using mixed logit and latent class models. Mixed logit estimation results show that the preference heterogeneity of consumers is especially large for the nuclear power relative to renewable or coal energy. According to the estimation results from the latent class model, group 1 prefers renewable energy while group 2 prefers coal energy. Group 3 shows lexicographic preference which means restricted rationality. As for the policy implication, it is necessary to understand the preference heterogeneity of consumer groups in planning the mid to long term power mix.

• International Journal of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.279-293
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• 2023

This study investigates network effects to measure how strongly the early adopters affect the brand choice of the potential consumer. By using the Gumbel-Hougaard (GH) copula, this study checks the magnitude of network effects varied from country to country. To consider consumer heterogeneity and network effects in the growth market, this study proposes the multi-brand Gamma/Shifted-Gompertz (m-G/SG) model based on the GH copula. Out of eighteen Western European cellular phone market data and South Korea smartphone data sets, the m-G/SG model provides an improvement in the estimation accuracy over the Libai, Muller, and Peres model. The results show that network effects enhance (i) the polarization of brand choice probabilities as time elapses; (ii) the dominance of the more preferred and the earlier entered brand; and (iii) the deceleration of category-level diffusion. Potential followers can analyze their relationship with earlier entrants through the m-G/SG model and also establish an optimal market entry strategy.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.12
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• pp.853-861
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• 2020

The study aims to measure the productivity of the Saudi banking sector at the retail level using secondary data for 11 local banks from the period 2015-2019. The study uses an extended version of the Cobb-Douglas production function to account for the fact that as banks openup more retail branches, they will need to employ more labor. The extended Cobb-Douglas production function was estimated using the two-way fixed effect model to account for unobserved heterogeneity across Saudi banks resulting from differences in labor competencies and leadership style. Besides, the model accounts for unobserved heterogeneity among Saudi banks due to the advancement in electronic services over time. The results showed that labor, branches, customers' deposits, and fixed deposits have a positive effect on the total value of generated loans. Conversely, ATM has an insignificant effect on generated loans. The average scale elasticity shows that the Saudi banks at the retail level are operating under decreasing returns to scale. The average marginal rate of technical substitution shows that Saudi banks need at least one ATM to replace one unit of labor at the retail level while keeping the same level of output.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.41-60
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• 2020

The goal of the study is to understand the role of social norm in purchase decisions where demand is revealed in the form of multiple-discreteness. Consumers are socially engaged in various activities through the expectation from others in their community. Actions or decisions are likely to reflect this influence. This implicit or explicit social norm is revealed as the rules, regulations, and standards that are understood, shared, endorsed, and expected by group members. When consumers' decisions are in distance from the norm, they come to face discomfort such as shame, guilt, embarrassment, and anxiety. These pressure act as a constraint as opposed to utility in their decision making. In this study, the effect of social norms on consumer demand is captured via multiple constraint model where constraints are not only from budget equation but also from psychological burden induced by the deviation from the norm. The posterior distributions of model parameters were estimated via conjoint study allowing for heterogeneity via hierarchical Bayesian framework. Individual characteristics such as age, gender and work experience are also used as covariates for capturing the observed heterogeneity. The empirical results show the role of social norm as constraint in consumers' utility maximization. The proposed model accounting for social constraint outperforms the standard budget constraint-only model in terms of model fit. It is found that people with longer job experience tend to be more robust and resistant to the deviation from the norm. Incorporating social norm into the utility model allows for another means to disentangle the reason for no-purchase as 'not preferred' and 'not able to buy'.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.121-147
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• 2009

This research attempts to investigate differences in past experiences of using internet in repurchasing. In doing so, the authors identify online consumer characteristics, particularly one-time and repeat users comparison across geographical borders of Korean and Taiwanese teenage customers. Results show that there are significant differences in online shopping typologies between Korean and Taiwanese customers. While attitude serves as a distinguishing factor for both data sets along the other two dimensions, trust does not. Since researchers have focused on comparisons between Western cultures and Asian cultures' online purchase behavior or Internet use, the current study provides a valuable comparison for this niche population of young customers at least in a Korean-Taiwanese context. The authors also make a brief argument that these findings can influence marketing practitioners and site developers in their strategies.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.22-38
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• 2023

This study empirically investigates e-market consumers' responses to monthly platform discount coupons. Specifically, based on an archival data set obtained from a leading e-marketplace in Korea, our hidden Markov model reveals that there are two different types of consumers on the e-market, those who purchase relatively less but seek temporal seller discounts (Class 1) and those who buy relatively more but are less attracted by such discounts (Class 2). Class 1 consumers purchase products when platform coupons are available but are less likely to buy when platform coupons are all redeemed. On the other hand, Class 2 consumers are willing to purchase products even without platform coupons. Our latent groups demonstrate that the effect of platform promotion is not unidirectional but may depend on the consumer state and class. We discuss the theoretical contributions and managerial implications of our findings.

• Korean Management Science Review
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.55-70
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• 2015

The main objective of this study is to investigate the moderating roles of the competitor's pricing strategy and the degree of consumer's risk-aversion on perceived risk and perceived benefit in responding to price increases and package downsizing. Based on Prospect Theory, several prior researches find that consumers perceive increased price as more loss than package downsizing and perceive package downsizing as more benefit than increased price. We extend these behavioral economics approach using the reference effect of competitor's pricing strategy. We focus on consumer heterogeneity on risk-aversion, measure the degree of consumer's risk-aversion, and divide the consumers into two groups of high levels of risk-aversion vs. low levels of risk-aversion. We find that the firm's pricing strategies of both price increases and package downsizing do not significantly influence the perceived benefit for relatively low risk-aversion consumers. We find that when the firm reduce the package size, relatively high risk-aversion consumers perceived more benefit and had higher purchase intention compared to price increases. We also find that the competitor's pricing strategies do not significantly influence the consumer's response for relatively low risk-aversion consumers. For relatively high risk-aversion consumers, they perceived more loss when the firm has different pricing strategy from the competitor's.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.29-50
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• 2020

Although companies perform societal marketing activities across different cultural regions, previous research was predominantly centered on a specific cultural region-the West. To address this limitation in the literature, the current research examines societal marketing in the Chinese market considering cultural characteristics. China has become the largest market in the world with great potential growth for its vast consumer base. Since there is heterogeneity among regions in China, it is imperative to divide China into several markets for better understanding. Thus, this study investigates different responses of Chinese regional (coastal vs. inland) consumers toward Cause-related Marketing (CM). Our findings reveal that Chinese consumers, in general, prefer utilitarian CM products compared to hedonic CM products, which is the opposite result of findings of the previous research. Further, this was truer for consumers in inland regions, while coastal consumers did not display any preference by product type. The academic and practical implications, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.527-542
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• 2021

The government-driven open data policies are on the rise to protect consumers from misunderstandings and monitor the companies. However, in contract-based industries such as insurance, the contract-inherent characteristics make information asymmetry between consumers and companies. Our paper focuses on insurance contracts where the contingency has high uncertainty of occurrence, and the clauses may incur high costs of reading. Given those contracts, we hypothesized that the contract's clear statement decreases customer dissatisfaction and lowers the number of complaints. To empirically support the claim, we collected customers' complaint documents of insurance companies and insurance contracts from 2005 until 2017. Our econometric models showed that clearer statements and words significantly reduce the complaints after controlling for firm-specific heterogeneity and time-specific heterogeneity. We identify that insurance companies' complaint ratio significantly differ depending on the insurance contract, including specific clauses and words.

• Journal of Digital Contents Society
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• v.19 no.7
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• pp.1389-1395
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• 2018

Hybrid is explained based on the logic of combination such as cross, melding, permeation, fusion, convergence etc. Such combination shows that it is more creative and effective in case of heterogeneity as compared to homogeneity and the same kind, and hybrid character has its meaning as a mean to produce a new creative image. In the context, this study aims to analyze influencing relationship through a practical analysis on how formative requirements for hybrid characters affects consumer preference. For the foregoing, this study conducted multiple regression analysis having familiarity, originality, meaningfulness, diversity as independent variables for formative requirements for characters, and consumer preference as a dependent variable. Analysis results show that familiarity, originality, diversity have a positive effect on consumers, whereas, meaningfulness has no significant impact on the consumer preference.