• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.47-56
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• 2020

Purpose: This study aims to explore how consumers respond to the immoral actions of a CEO. More specifically, this research focuses on the moral reasoning processes used by consumers in order to maintain support for the CEO despite the immoral action. In addition, this research suggests that support for the CEO would improve product purchase intention. Research design, data, and methodology: To test the hypotheses presented, an online research company was hired and online survey was conducted with adult participants. Online research company sent an email to the potential subjects asking their participation in an online survey. Subjects were able to participate in the online survey by clicking a link to the survey. When the participants clicked the link, they were instructed to read a fictitious newspaper article on a CEO's immoral action. And then, they were asked to answer several questions online. Responses were obtained from 336 adults participants and data were analyzed using SPSS Hayes Macro for a moderation effect and AMOS for a structural equation model. Result: Moral reasoning processes were divided into moral decoupling and moral rationalization and analyzed to determine their influence on product purchase. Also in this study, we suggest the public self-consciousness of consumers as an antecedent of moral reasoning processes, and argue that consumers with high public self-consciousness are more likely to engage in moral decoupling than moral rationalization. Conclusions: Our results showed that moral decoupling and moral rationalization improved the consumer's perception of corporate ethicality, which increased product purchase intention. In addition, consumers with high public self-consciousness were more likely to engage in moral decoupling than in moral rationalization. In addition, this research suggested that severity of the scandal would moderate the impact of public self-consciousness on moral decoupling. However, this hypothesis was not supported statistically since most participants perceived the scandal to be a highly severe incident, that may lead to an insignificant interaction effect between severity of the scandal and public self-consciousness. This research expands the scope of available research on corporate ethics and consumer responses to negative information involving celebrities and provides practical implications for corporate crisis management.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.17 no.8
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• pp.77-85
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• 2019

Purpose - The use of celebrity endorsers is a strategy long-since used by companies to improve the persuasive impact of their company's advertising. However, much like anyone else, celebrities are flawed human beings, and therefore often find themselves involved in scandals. Companies must consider the potential of scandals when using a celebrity endorser to represent their brand or product. This research focuses on the process consumers use to justify scandals involving celebrity endorsers. Specifically, this research divides the justification processes used by consumers to maintain support for celebrities involved in a scandal into moral decoupling and moral rationalization and proposes antecedents and consequences for these processes. Methodology - To verify the hypotheses suggested by this study, an online survey was conducted, and data was analyzed using a structural equation model. Result - Results showed that consumer empathy for the celebrity endorser and external attribution of the scandal presented were positively related to moral decoupling and moral rationalization. In addition, moral rationalization was positively related to consumers' attitude towards the celebrity endorser, which also enhanced brand attitude. However, the relationship between moral decoupling and the consumer's attitude toward the celebrity endorser was not statistically significant. Conclusion - This research serves to expand the scope of available research on the persuasiveness of celebrity endorsers and provides practical guidelines for marketers.

• Journal of Ethics
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• no.82
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• pp.73-125
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• 2011

This article aims to search for moral educational implication of J. D. Greene's recent neuro-scientific approaches to deontological ethics. Recently new technique in neuroscience such as fMRI is applied to moral and social psychological concepts or terms, and 'affective primacy' and 'automaticity' principles are highlighted as basic concepts of the new paradigm. When these principles are introduced to ethical theories, it makes rooms of new and different interpretations of them. J. D. Greene et al. claim that deontological moral judgments or theories are just a kind of post hoc rationalization for intuitions or emotions by ways of neuroscientific findings and evolutionary interpretation. For example, Kant's categorical imperative in which a maxim should be universalizable to be as a principle, might be a product of moral intuition. Firstly this article tries to search for intellectual backgrounds of the social intuitionalism where Greens' thought originates. Secondly, this article tries to collect and summarize his arguments about moral dilemma responses, personal-impersonal dilemma catergorizing hypothesis, fMRI data interpretations by ways of evolutionary theory, cultural and social psychological theories, application to deontological and consequential theories, and his suggestion that deontological ethics shoud be rejected as a normative ethical thought and consequentialism be a promising theory etc. Thirdly, this tries to analyse and critically exam those aspects and argumentation, especially from viewpoints of the ethicists whose various strategies seek to defeat Greene's claims. Fourthly, this article criticizes that his arguments make a few critical mistakes in methodology and data interpretation. Last, this article seeks to find its implications for moral education in korea, in which in spite of incomplete argumentation of his neuroscientific approach to morality, neuroethics needs to be introduced as a new approach and educational content, and critical materials as well.

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.197-219
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• 2014

Despite of continuous efforts to crack down on piracy using penalties and regulations, this unauthorized piracy market is still enormous. Since the moral hazard about this phenomenon is pervasive and continually upsets the major intellectual property markets, an alternative plan is required. The purpose of this study is to provide an objective insight for factors that affect people's digital video piracy behavior. The following two research propositions were the focus: what psychological factors affect piracy behavior and how are these factors related to one another? In order to accomplish the research aims, we reviewed literatures on the current state of piracy in South Korea, characteristics of digital contents, studies on criminal psychology and behavioral theories. Previous research in the fields of criminal theory indicated that neutralization, a form of rationalization, would help explain digital piracy intentions. Thus, this study developed a model that explains effects of neutralization techniques and tested the possibility of an integrated model with other behavioral theory such as TPB and TIB. Empirical results of the study(368 sample collected) showed that all the factors in TPB including Attitude to Piracy(+), Subjective Norm(-), Perceived Behavioral Control(+) had a significant impact on Piracy Intention. Moreover, two neutralization techniques, Condemn the Condemners(+) and Appeal to Higher Loyalties(+), had a significant effect on Piracy Intention. In addition, Past Behavior had strong impacts on Attitude(+), Perceived Behavioral Control(+) and Piracy Intention(+). In terms of Expected Profit, it had an impact on Attitude to Piracy positively. These findings suggest implications for protecting the current intellectual property markets, with many stakeholders in movies and media industries. There are some limitations as followed: first, the study did not consider other neutralization techniques, low level of deterrence and the other expected results despite the possibility of their effects. Second, the study needs improvements through longitudinal research because the cross-sectional research could not rule out the alternative explanations.