• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.53-77
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• 2013

As advertising and promotions are categorized as operating expenses, managers tend to reduce marketing budget to improve their short term profitability. Gauging the value and accountability of marketing spending is therefore considered as a major research priority in marketing. To respond this call, recent studies have documented that financial market reacts positively to a firm's marketing activity or marketing related outcomes such as brand equity and customer satisfaction. However, prior studies focus on the relation of marketing variable and financial market variables. This study suggests a channel about how marketing activity increases firm valuation. Specifically, we propose that a firm's marketing activity increases the level of the firm's product market information and thereby the dispersion in financial analysts' earnings forecasts decreases. With less uncertainty about the firm's future prospect, the firm's managers and shareholders have less information asymmetry, which reduces the firm's cost of capital and thereby increases the valuation of the firm. To our knowledge, this is the first paper to examine how informational benefits can mediate the effect of marketing activity on firm value. To test whether marketing activity contributes to increase in firm value by mitigating information asymmetry, this study employs a longitudinal data which contains 12,824 firm-year observations with 2,337 distinct firms from 1981 to 2006. Firm value is measured by Tobin's Q and one-year-ahead buy-and-hold abnormal return (BHAR). Following prior literature, dispersion in analysts' earnings forecasts is used as a proxy for the information gap between management and shareholders. For model specification, to identify mediating effect, the three-step regression approach is adopted. All models are estimated using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods to test the statistical significance of the mediating effect. The analysis shows that marketing intensity has a significant negative relationship with dispersion in analysts' earnings forecasts. After including the mediator variable about analyst dispersion, the effect of marketing intensity on firm value drops from 1.199 (p < .01) to 1.130 (p < .01) in Tobin's Q model and the same effect drops from .192 (p < .01) to .188 (p < .01) in BHAR model. The results suggest that analysts' forecast dispersion partially accounts for the positive effect of marketing on firm valuation. Additionally, the same analysis was conducted with an alternative dependent variable (forecast accuracy) and a marketing metric (advertising intensity). The analysis supports the robustness of the main results. In sum, the results provide empirical evidence that marketing activity can increase shareholder value by mitigating problem of information asymmetry in the capital market. The findings have important implications for managers. First, managers should be cognizant of the role of marketing activity in providing information to the financial market as well as to the consumer market. Thus, managers should take into account investors' reaction when they design marketing communication messages for reducing the cost of capital. Second, this study shows a channel on how marketing creates shareholder value and highlights the accountability of marketing. In addition to the direct impact of marketing on firm value, an indirect channel by reducing information asymmetry should be considered. Potentially, marketing managers can justify their spending from the perspective of increasing long-term shareholder value.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.29-52
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• 2012

Consumers differ in the way they make a purchase. An audio mania would willingly make a bold, yet serious, decision to buy a top-of-the-line home theater system, while he is not interested in replacing his two-decade-old shabby car. On the contrary, an automobile enthusiast wouldn't mind spending forty thousand dollars to buy a new Jaguar convertible, yet cares little about his junky component system. It is product involvement that helps us explain such differences among individuals in the purchase style. Product involvement refers to the extent to which a product is perceived to be important to a consumer (Zaichkowsky, 2001). Product involvement is an important factor that strongly influences consumer's purchase decision-making process, and thus has been of prime interest to consumer behavior researchers. Furthermore, researchers found that involvement is closely related to perceived risk (Dholakia, 2001). While abundant research exists addressing how product involvement relates to overall perceived risk, little attention has been paid to the relationship between involvement and different types of perceived risk in an electronic commerce setting. Given that perceived risk can be a substantial barrier to the online purchase (Jarvenpaa, 2000), research addressing such an issue will offer useful implications on what specific types of perceived risk an online firm should focus on mitigating if it is to increase sales to a fullest potential. Meanwhile, past research has focused on such consumer responses as information search and dissemination as a consequence of involvement, neglecting other behavioral responses like online merchant selection. For one example, will a consumer seriously considering the purchase of a pricey Guzzi bag perceive a great degree of risk associated with online buying and therefore choose to buy it from a digital storefront rather than from an online marketplace to mitigate risk? Will a consumer require greater trust on the part of the online merchant when the perceived risk of online buying is rather high? We intend to find answers to these research questions through an empirical study. This paper explores the impact of enduring product involvement and perceived risks on required trust level, and further on online merchant choice. For the purpose of the research, five types or components of perceived risk are taken into consideration, including financial, performance, delivery, psychological, and social risks. A research model has been built around the constructs under consideration, and 12 hypotheses have been developed based on the research model to examine the relationships between enduring involvement and five components of perceived risk, between five components of perceived risk and required trust level, between enduring involvement and required trust level, and finally between required trust level and preference toward an e-tailer. To attain our research objectives, we conducted an empirical analysis consisting of two phases of data collection: a pilot test and main survey. The pilot test was conducted using 25 college students to ensure that the questionnaire items are clear and straightforward. Then the main survey was conducted using 295 college students at a major university for nine days between December 13, 2010 and December 21, 2010. The measures employed to test the model included eight constructs: (1) enduring involvement, (2) financial risk, (3) performance risk, (4) delivery risk, (5) psychological risk, (6) social risk, (7) required trust level, (8) preference toward an e-tailer. The statistical package, SPSS 17.0, was used to test the internal consistency among the items within the individual measures. Based on the Cronbach's ${\alpha}$ coefficients of the individual measure, the reliability of all the variables is supported. Meanwhile, the Amos 18.0 package was employed to perform a confirmatory factor analysis designed to assess the unidimensionality of the measures. The goodness of fit for the measurement model was satisfied. Unidimensionality was tested using convergent, discriminant, and nomological validity. The statistical evidences proved that the three types of validity were all satisfied. Now the structured equation modeling technique was used to analyze the individual paths along the relationships among the research constructs. The results indicated that enduring involvement has significant positive relationships with all the five components of perceived risk, while only performance risk is significantly related to trust level required by consumers for purchase. It can be inferred from the findings that product performance problems are mostly likely to occur when a merchant behaves in an opportunistic manner. Positive relationships were also found between involvement and required trust level and between required trust level and online merchant choice. Enduring involvement is concerned with the pleasure a consumer derives from a product class and/or with the desire for knowledge for the product class, and thus is likely to motivate the consumer to look for ways of mitigating perceived risk by requiring a higher level of trust on the part of the online merchant. Likewise, a consumer requiring a high level of trust on the merchant will choose a digital storefront rather than an e-marketplace, since a digital storefront is believed to be trustworthier than an e-marketplace, as it fulfills orders by itself rather than acting as an intermediary. The findings of the present research provide both academic and practical implications. The first academic implication is that enduring product involvement is a strong motivator of consumer responses, especially the selection of a merchant, in the context of electronic shopping. Secondly, academicians are advised to pay attention to the finding that an individual component or type of perceived risk can be used as an important research construct, since it would allow one to pinpoint the specific types of risk that are influenced by antecedents or that influence consequents. Meanwhile, our research provides implications useful for online merchants (both online storefronts and e-marketplaces). Merchants may develop strategies to attract consumers by managing perceived performance risk involved in purchase decisions, since it was found to have significant positive relationship with the level of trust required by a consumer on the part of the merchant. One way to manage performance risk would be to thoroughly examine the product before shipping to ensure that it has no deficiencies or flaws. Secondly, digital storefronts are advised to focus on symbolic goods (e.g., cars, cell phones, fashion outfits, and handbags) in which consumers are relatively more involved than others, whereas e- marketplaces should put their emphasis on non-symbolic goods (e.g., drinks, books, MP3 players, and bike accessories).

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.195-209
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• 2021

According to the 2019-2020 social media usage survey conducted by the Seoul e-commerce center, 5 out of 10 consumers have experienced shopping through social media. The cost of traditional advertising media has been reduced and advertising spending on social media has risen by 74%, indicating that social media is becoming a more important marketing element. While the number of users of social media has increased and corporate marketing activities have increased accordingly, research has been conducted in various aspects of marketing such as user motivation for social media, satisfaction, and purchase intention. There was no subdivided study on the differences in the social media usage frequency of consumers in actual purchasing behavior. This study attempted to identify differences in consumer characteristics by cluster in the agrifood purchase situation by grouping them by type according to the frequency of use of social media for consumers who purchase agri-food online. Product involvement, product need, and online purchase channel Consumer characteristics such as demographic distribution, perceived risk, and eating and lifestyle in each cluster were checked for the three agrifood purchase situations including choice, and types for each cluster were presented. To this end, questionnaire data on the frequency of social media use and online agrifood purchase behavior were collected from 245 consumers, and the validity of the measurement variables was secured through factor analysis and reliability analysis. As a result of cluster analysis according to the frequency of social media use, it was divided into three clusters. The first cluster was a group that mainly used open social media, and the second cluster was a group that used both open and closed social media and online shopping malls; The third cluster was a group with low online media usage overall, and the characteristics of each cluster appeared. Through regression analysis, the effect on product involvement, product need, and purchase channel selection when purchasing agri-food online through each of the three clusters was confirmed through regression analysis. As a result of the regression analysis, the characteristic of cluster 1 in the situation of purchasing agri-food online is a male in his 30s living in a rural area who has no reluctance to purchase agri-food on social media or online shopping malls. The characteristics of cluster 2 are mainly consumers who are interested in purchasing health food, and the consumer characteristics are represented. In the case of cluster 3, when purchasing products online, they purchase after considering quality and price a lot, and the consumer characteristics are represented as people who are more confident in purchasing offline than online. Through this study, it is judged that by identifying the differences in consumer characteristics that appear in the agri-food purchase situation according to the frequency of social media use, it can be helpful in strategic judgments in marketing practice on social media customer targeting and customer segmentation.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.171-205
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• 2014

This paper investigates the manner in which house prices affect macroeconomic variables through a house price channel by applying the method of Iacoviello (2005) to Korean data, and establishing a DSGE model with complementarity. This paper found that higher LTV ratio coupled with stronger complementarity results in the co-movement in both consumption and housing. For instance, the results show that when the LTV ratio and complementarity stands respectively at 50% and 0.42, an 1% rise in house prices increases consumption by 0.057%, and when the complementarity parameter increases to 0.52 with LTV remains unchanged at 50%, consumption rises by 0.047% per 1% increase in house prices. An increase in house prices leads credit constraints for borrowers to become more loose as value of a house rises as a collateral. The increase in household credit enables more consumer spending, eventually leading to increased consumption. A key link in which house prices are connected to macroeconomic variables is change in consumption. To put it simply, a rise in house prices leads to an increase in consumption, which consequently impacts the overall macro-economy. At this point, complementarity is found, in that the elasticity of intra-temporal substitution between housing and consumption is estimated at 0.42, which plays an important role in the house price channel by amplifying the effects of house prices on consumption.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.561-573
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• 2015

The influence of tourists on the retail market in Korea continues to grow, and China has become the largest outbound-spending nation in the world. Korea's retail industry must comprehend the sophisticated consumption behavior of Chinese tourists. Hence, we explored how the experiential value of shopping in Korea affected Chinese tourists' satisfaction levels regarding stores and products. Findings from this study suggest entertainment and escapism mediate the effect of experiential value on consumer attitudes toward products and stores. This research was conducted with Chinese female tourists who shopped in Korea during their latest visit to this country. CFA and SEM were implemented using AMOS 20.0. The analysis of survey data produced interesting results. Visual appeal, crowding, and service excellence had positive impacts on entertainment, and they had a positive influence on both store satisfaction and product satisfaction. Regarding escapism, crowding and economic benefits had positive impacts, whereas visual appeal and service excellence had no effects. Results showed that escapism had a negative influence on attitudes toward both products and stores. To be clear, escapism refers to the status of absorption by which consumers are highly occupied with pleasant feelings, therefore, shopping when the motive of escapism is high is likely to be less rational and more impulsive. In this study, the diverse roles of different emotions associated with entertainment and escapism in the context of tourism shopping were identified. The findings provide practical implications for developing retail strategies and highlight the importance of the experiential values of shopping for tourists.

• The Journal of Bigdata
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.59-69
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• 2017

According to precedent research of disaster economics, most of the studies are either based on belated macroeconomic indicators or are limited to specific industries. It is certain that preventing disaster is important, but immediate analysis and reconstruction policy are crucial as well. This research analyzed the ripple effect of consumer spending followed by April 16 ferry disaster and MERS outbreak; it was done by applying credit card company's real-time big data with Marketing Mix Modeling. The main focus of this research is to see if it is possible to predict the scale of damage during ongoing disasters. It is found that setting up weekly MMM and moving the timeline draws significance conclusion. When disasters or events occur in future, this research may be the basis of building quick and intuitive indicator to monitor possible effects.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.209-227
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• 2006

This paper analyse current interpretation of the "causal link" that in particular, focuses principally on the so-called "non-attribution" requirement of Article 4.2(b) of the Safeguards Agreement. The safeguard measures are justified as a temporary economic adjustment to harm that is caused by an increase in imports. The problem with this justification is that there are other kinds of economic forces that may injure domestic industries, such as changes in consumer tastes, government spending or a lack thereof, and economic downturns. These problems do not justify government-imposed remedies. When factors therefore other than increased imports are causing injury to the domestic industry at the same time, such injury shall not be attributed to increased imports. The Appellate Body stressed that a contribution of third-party imports to the existence of serious injury must be sufficiently clear as to establish the existence of the causal link required, it found that Article 4.2(b) does not suggest that increased imports be the sole cause of the serious injury, or that other factors causing injury must be excluded from the determination of serious injury. The interest in separation is to ensure that a measure is not applied to remedy harm not caused by imports, but this basic point assumes that the harm is distinguishable in the first place. It also assumes that the safeguard is designed to respond to harm caused by imports. In fact safeguards were never intended to respond to this kind of unfair trade, but rather to provide whatever emergency relief might assist an ailing domestic industry if imports happened to be a part of that injury. The Appellate Body's insistence in breaking cause and effect down to minutia in the non-attribution analysis seems to be so overly intricate that it conflicts with it's broader focus on evaluating factors that effect harm on the industry as a whole.

• Journal of Families and Better Life
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.119-132
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• 2012

The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences in time use between Korean and American high school students. The data sources were the '2009 Time Use Survey' conducted by Korea National Statistical Office and the '2009 ATUS (American Time Use Survey)' conducted by Labor Statistics Division in the U.S.. 1,734 Korean diaries (1,311 on weekdays and 423 on Sundays) and 321 American diaries (208 on weekdays and 113 on Sundays) from high school students of 15 to 18 years of age were analyzed. Descriptive statistics and t-test were used for the statistical analysis. The time use patterns of Korean students on weekdays and Sundays were different than those of their American counterparts. On weekdays and Sundays, the sleeping time of Korean students was 2 hours less than the time of their American counterparts. Koreans studied more, nearly double the time of their American counterparts on weekdays and five times more on Sundays. The study-oriented time allocation of Korean students resulted in less leisure time than the American students. Korean students spent their leisure time of more than 30 minutes participating in social activities, media, and hobbies, and their time allocation to volunteer work and religious activities were nil. On Sundays, the time for studying by Korean students was more than five times longer than that spending by their American counterparts. Koreans used their leisure time of 6 hours and 47 minutes mainly for media, hobbies and social activities. The participation rate of volunteering by Korean students was only 0.5%, though it was 31.0% for the Americans. For a study-life balance for Korean students, it was recommended that trends toward time management and social policy should increase the time allocation to sleeping, housework, work, sports, and volunteering and decrease the time use in studying and hobbies.

• Journal of the Korea Fashion and Costume Design Association
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.153-162
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to examine the differences in the service quality evaluation on the skill and expert, the shop facilities and atmosphere, the time and access, and the price and benefit of a nail care shop by age, income, spendings of appearance and a nail care, and a regular nail care. The survey was performed with questionnaires and the subjects were was 240 consumers who used the nail care. The data were analyzed by frequencies, F-test, T-test, Factor Analysis, one way ANOVA. The results of the study were as follows: Service quality evaluation were classified four factors- the price and benefits, the skill and expertness, the facilities and atmosphere, the time and access. There were no statistically significant differences in the price and benefits by age, income, spendings of appearance and a nail care, and a regular nail care, but there were statistically significant differences in the skill and expertness, the facilities and atmosphere, and the time and access. The service quality on the time and access was evaluated as high by the consumer in the 30s, with more income, and with high appearance and nail care spendings. The service quality on the shop facilities and atmosphere was evaluated as high by the consumers with high nail care spending. The consumers with a regular nail care evaluated the service quality on the skill and expertness, the time and access, the shop facilities and atmosphere as high.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.341-350
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• 2015

This study aims to understand main contents of the National Mental Health Strategy and changes after mental health reform through the National Mental Health Strategy in Australia, and to find some convergence policy implications on mental health policy in South Korea. The direction of reform has changed considerably over the 20 years that the National Mental Health Strategy has been in place including the National Mental Health Policy(1992, 2008), the National Mental Health Plan(1993~2014), COAG National Action Plan on Mental Health(2006~2011), the Roadmap for National Mental Health Reform 2012-2022. The National Mental Health Strategy has advocated fundamental change in the national spending on mental health, mental health service provision, the expansion of community-based mental health services and care system, NGO, consumer and carer participation in mental health care.