• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.123-134
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• 2010

Considering the benefits for both consumers and suppliers, firms are taking advantage of the Internet as a medium to communicate with and sell products to their consumers. This trend makes the online shopping environment a growing field for both researchers and practitioners. This paper contributes by testing a model of online consumer behavior with websites varying in levels of hedonism. Unlike past studies, we included all three types of emotions (arousal, pleasure, and dominance) and flow into the model. In this study, we assumed that website interfaces, such as background colors, music, and fonts impact the three types of emotions at the initial exposure to the site (Mazaheri, Richard, and Laroche, 2011). In turn, these emotions influence flow and consumers' perceptions of the site atmospherics-perception of site informativeness, effectiveness, and entertainment. This assumption is consistent with Zajonc (1980) who argued that affective reactions are independent of perceptual and cognitive operations and can influence responses. We, then, propose that the perceptions of site atmospherics along with flow, influence customers' attitudes toward the website and toward the product, site involvement, and purchase intentions. In addition, we studied the moderating impact of the level of hedonism of websites on all the relationship in the model. Thus, the path coefficients were compared between "high" and "low" hedonic websites. We used 39 real websites from 12 product categories (8 services and 4 physical goods) to test the model. Among them, 20 were perceived as high hedonic and 19 as low hedonic by the respondents. The result of EQS 6.1 support the overall model: $\chi^2$=1787 (df=504), CFI=.994; RMSEA=.031. All the hypotheses were significant. In addition, the results of multi-groups analyses reveal several non-invariant structural paths between high and low hedonic website groups. The findings supported the model regarding the influence of the three types of emotions on customers' perceptions of site atmospherics, flow, and other customer behavior variables. It was found that pleasure strongly influenced site attitudes and perceptions of site entertainment. Arousal positively impacted the other two types of emotions, perceptions of site informativeness, and site involvement. Additionally, the influence of arousal on flow was found to be highly significant. The results suggested a strong association between dominance and customers' perceptions of site effectiveness. Dominance was also found to be associated with site attitudes and flow. Moreover, the findings suggested that site involvement and attitudes toward the product are the most important antecedents of purchase intentions. Site informativeness and flow also significantly influenced purchase intentions. The results of multi-group analysis supported the moderating impacts of hedonism of the websites. Compared to low (high) hedonic sites, the impacts of utilitarian (hedonic) attributes on other variables were stronger in high (low) hedonic websites. Among the three types of emotions, dominance (controlling feelings) effects were stronger in high hedonic sites and pleasure effects were stronger in low hedonic sites. Moreover, the impact of site informativeness was stronger for high hedonic websites compared to their low-hedonic counterparts. On the other hand, the influence of effectiveness of information on perceptions of site informativeness and the impact of site involvement on product attitudes were stronger for low hedonic websites than for high hedonic ones.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.59 no.2
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• pp.197-222
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• 2007

The study aims to evaluate the outcomes of the Centers for Independent Living(CILs) demonstration program and to recommend future directions for CILs in 2006. The framework for the evaluation is a logic model, which facilitates outcome-based performance measurement. The measures associated with the logic model include input, activity, output, and outcomes. The data were collected by interviewing the executive directors of 10 CILs and conducting telephone survey with 231 consumers with disabilities. The study found that 69% consumers acquired new knowledge and skills for independent living. The study also revealed that 87% consumers experienced the positive changes in their lives and 83% consumers were satisfied with the services of the Centers. After using the services, consumers reported significant increases in self-confidence, and in the number and the level of involvement in the activities. In addition, the study found that the employment status of the consumers was improved, and the number of persons who were living in institutions was decreased. The study supports the advancement of policy to institutionalize Centers for Independent Living, and points to the importance of developing the capacity of the Association of Centers for Independent Living to ensure high quality services. In addition, it is suggested that the development of a manual for these services is necessary, and that services should be provided across disabilities and throughout the country, especially in rural areas.

• Informatization Policy
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.3-17
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• 2013

As electronic marketplaces grow and a large number of consumers exchange their opinions on products and services on the Internet, many studies have been conducted in the area of online consumer reviews. This paper analyzes the research trend of the online consumer reviews by investigating those studies in an attempt to provide future research directions. Many researchers have focused on the effects of online reviews on consumer behaviors as well as the usefulness of the online reviews. In particular, review contents, characteristics of reviewers/consumers and features of products/services have been identified as influencing factors on the effects of the online consumer reviews. For the review contents, the number and the volume of the contents have increasing effects on the online reviews, while the direction (positive vs. negative) of the contents has resulted in conflicting effects of the review. The reputation and trustfulness of reviewers, consumers' prior knowledge on the products, consumers' product involvement, and types of the products were investigated as these factors influence the effectiveness of the online consumer reviews. Social media (such as Facebook and Twitter) nowadays play an important role to disseminate online reviews among consumers. Thus, it is necessary to study how social media influence the effects of online reviews on consumers. Since some firms abuse the online reviews for their own sakes, we recognize the necessity for empirical studies on the side effects of the online reviews.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.73-92
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• 2009

Consumers influence other consumers' brand choice behavior by delivering a variety of objective or subjective information on a particular product, which is called WOM (Word-Of-Mouth) activities. For WOM activities, WOM senders should choose messages to deliver to other consumers. We classify the contents of the messages a consumer chooses for WOM delivery into two categories: Subjective (positive or negative) evaluation and objective information on products. In our study, we regard WOM senders' activities as a choice behavior and introduce a choice model to study the relationship between the choice of different WOM information (WOM with positive or negative subjective evaluation and WOM with objective information) and its influencing factors (information sources and consumer characteristics) by developing two bivariate Probit models. In order to consider the mediating effects of WOM senders' product involvement, product attitude, and their characteristics (gender and age), we develop three second-level models for the propagation of positive evaluations, of negative evaluations, and of objective information on products in an hierarchical Bayesian modeling framework. Our empirical results show that WOM senders' information choice behavior differs according to the types of information sources. The effects of information sources on WOM activities differ according to the types of WOM messages (subjective evaluation (positive or negative) and objective information). Therefore, our study concludes that WOM activities can be partially managed with effective communication plans influencing on consumers' WOM message choice behavior. The empirical results provide some guidelines for consumers' propagation of information on products companies want.

• Archives of design research
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• v.19 no.5 s.67
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• pp.243-254
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• 2006

Maniac consumers have a ripple effect on marketing because they are the main body of trends and consumer economy. So It is very important that we should first read needs and wants - in other words, psychological motives. And then we should find maniac consumer segments. This is an exploratory study that was done to obtain an insight for the new maniac consumer market segmentation. It examined the definition and characteristics of digital maniacs in Korea, and it carried out a literature study on consumers who have a similar consumption trend as the maniac users as a pre-study. Also, it looked into the trends and values of the maniac community in Korea, using the previous study's scale for innovative consumers. Next, the study interviewed maniac users using the first data and focused on discovering and grouping the new maniac segments based on the results. The study analyzed the purchase behaviors, decision-making, attitude for involvement and potential needs of the digital maniacs in Korea, and it discovered the segments for the segmentation of maniacs so it could find out the disposition and status of the digital maniacs. Such approach can be used as a strategical due for maniac target marketing and design(customer-oriented marketing and design) in the future.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.95-102
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• 2019

Purpose - The purpose of the research is to identify the demographic characteristics of the customers with high private label purchase intention. According to the previous research demographics such as gender, age, income, and residence type affect private label purchase intention indirectly through psychographics rather than directly. For instance, higher income group is time pressured, price-insensitive, quality-sensitive, less likely to enjoy shopping utilitarian products, and less likely to be variety-seeking. The main contribution of this research is to verify the results found in the previous empirical foreign research using scanner data and to investigate the differences of the characteristics of private label users between Korea and the foreign countries. Research design, data, and methodology - In order to empirically test the proposed hypotheses, scanner data of a Korean major super center was analyzed. Results - Empirical results show that private labels are more favored by old people over 50s, dwellers in individual house, lower income group, and frequent store visitors. Age of 30s, dwellers in the apartment of 30 pyung, higher income group, and consumers who purchased a large amount are less likely to purchase private labels. Gender turned out not to affect private label purchase. It should be noted that there is a significant multicollinearity among independent variables. Conclusions - The research findings provide managerial implication for retailers' private label strategy. In general, retailers heavily send private label coupons to the customers with high purchase volume. According to the research, however, store visit frequency is much more positively associated with private label purchase than purchase amount. The study has some limitations. The samples are only consumers with private label purchase experience. The data were drawn from one store and only 8 commodity products were used for the analysis. Also, if more demographics were available, a more complete description on the private brand users' profile could have been derived. We propose the following future research. Research using the data including consumers without private label experience, research investigating direction of causality between private label loyalty and store loyalty, and research using hedonic private label products such as TV and PC could be promising.

• Human Ecology Research
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• v.53 no.5
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• pp.543-556
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• 2015

This study examined the influence of self-regulatory resource depletion and self-regulatory modes on fashion product purchase intention. Initial research design dealt with differences of the resource depletion effect according to self-regulatory modes. The study used a 2 (self-regulatory resource depletion: depletion/non-depletion) ${\times}$ 2 (regulatory mode: assessment mode/locomotion mode) between-subjects factorial design. Second, the research design empirically analyzed the influence of self-regulatory resource depletion and self-regulatory mode on the fashion product purchase intention by each product group divided by type and involvement of fashion product. The subjects for the initial research were 255 university students in Seoul, Gyeonggi, and Daejeon. The subjects for the second research were 873 university students in Seoul and Daejeon. Collected data were analyzed with SPSS statistical package with reliability analysis, t -test, analysis of variance (ANOVA), and analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). The results were as follows. First, assessment-oriented consumers showed low purchase intentions about fashion products when self-regulatory resources were exhausted than when self-regulatory resource were not exhausted. Locomotion-oriented consumers, indicated no differences in purchase intention about fashion products regardless of self-regulatory resource depletion. Second, influences on purchase intention by self-regulatory resource depletion and self-regulatory mode were different according to the fashion product group. The results of this study implied that strategies should be differentiated when establishing a fashion industry marketing strategy according to the self-regulatory resource depletion and self-regulatory mode of consumers.

• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.285-297
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• 2019

Retail firms have begun to pursue the marketing strategies, which stimulate consumers' sensibility and lead people to purchase their products. The visible effects of visual merchandising (VM) arouse consumers' interest and play an effective role in having busy people efficiently choose products. Apparel retail stores such as SPA use the offline store to be the experiential environment of their branding. Consumers' sensitivity and response toward various visual merchandising strategies needs to be accessed. The purpose of this study is to identify VM consciousness and VM evaluation attribute factors. Relationship of such variables with other variables were accessed. As consequence variables, product satisfaction and unplanned purchase behavior were included in the study. An empirical survey data was collected from men and women of various ages. Results indicated that VM consciousness and VM evaluation attribute factors were not correlated with consumer demographic variables. VM evaluation attributes were factored into appropriateness, attractiveness and functionality dimensions. Clothing involvement and brand orientation significantly influenced product satisfaction and unplanned purchase. The direct and indirect effect (via VM consciousness) were significant. For unplanned purchase, brand orientation only had indirect effect. The influence of VM evaluation attribute factors were significant. Appropriateness had stronger effect on product satisfaction whereas attractiveness had stronger effect on unplanned behavior. Functionality dimension had only indirect effect on product satisfaction but did not show significant direct and indirect effects on unplanned purchase. This study identified the pivotal role of VM consciousness in various shopping and purchasing circumstances in offline retail store of apparel brands.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.377-388
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• 2016

The purposes of this study are; first, to supply useful suggestions for the market segmentation of the Chinese market according to individual psychological variables(self-congruence) of customers. Second, it figures out the relative importance of actual self-congruence and ideal self-congruence. Lastly, it reveals whether there are any differences in the preference of attributes according to the popular cultural involvement. According to the results, actual self-congruence had a positive influence on the contents factor evaluation while ideal self-congruence had positive effect on the human and cultural factors evaluation. Also, the human and cultural factor had a positive influence on the purchase intention, as well as content factor and cultural factor had the influence on the word-of-mouth. In addition, the group of highly interested in the involvement at the popular culture was significantly higher in the evaluation on the human and contents factor than the low group.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.41-51
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• 2020

Purpose: Fast food franchise companies are trying a variety of innovative services to increase their competitiveness in response to changes in population composition in the fast food market and rapid changes in consumption trends due to technological development. From this point of view, franchise companies that have focused on offline store operations are providing O2O (offline to online) service as a core service for customer convenience. This new attempt is a strategy to increase loyalty by applying an interaction method based on understanding the characteristics of new generation consumers. However, existing studies are focused on the relationship between O2O service and acceptance, so very little is known about how O2O service affects customer loyalty. Therefore, this study examines the impacts of customer involvement and relative advantages of fast food O2O service on customer brand engagement (cognitive and affective engagement) and store loyalty for MZ(Millennials - Z) generations. Research design, data, and methodology: In order to achieve the purposes of this research, several hypotheses were developed. The data were collected from 247 questionnaires in their 16-30s and were analyzed using SPSS 22.0 and SmartPLS 3.0 program. Measurement model analysis was carried out to assess convergent and discriminant validity. Also, common method bias was tested using the values of VIF (variance inflation factor). The hypotheses was tested using structural equation modeling. Result: First, involvement has a positive effect on cognitive and affective engagement. Second, relative advantages have has a positive effect on cognitive and affective engagement. Third, cognitive influences affective engagement. Finally, both cognitive and affective engagement affect store loyalty, but affective engagement has a stronger effect on store loyalty than cognitive engagement. Conclusions: In the process of consumer-brand interaction, it was confirmed that store loyalty was influenced by cognitive and affective engagement sequentially. However, the results show that affective engagement has a relatively stronger on store loyalty than cognitive engagement. Therefore, it is necessary to establish an O2O service strategy to maintain long-term loyal customers by inducing cognitive participation with high-involved consumer, as well as affective interaction, in order to obtain new customers and increase customer loyalty.