• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.177-190
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• 2018

Fashion industry constantly produces and consumes, which leads to huge waste piles of perfectly usable textiles in landfills, as well as other negative effects of an exploitative and excessively rapid fashion process. Pollution created by making and dyeing clothes has pitted fashion industry and environmentalists against each other. In this context, upcycling is seen as an optimal way to solve the growing problem of waste in fashion industry. The first purpose of the study was to analyze the relationships between upcycling fashion products' perceived value, pro-environmental beliefs, attitudes, electronic word of mouth (eWOM) intention, and purchase intention. The second purpose is to verify the difference of perceived consumption value among the consumers' awareness level and purchase experience. A total of 258 valid responses obtained from a group of 20-30-year-old participants were collected through an online survey. SPSS 23.0 and Amos 18.0 programs were used for data analysis. The results of the present study suggest that there are significant effects of upcycling fashion products' perceived value on pro-environmental belief; furthermore, pro-environmental belief was found to positively influence attitude, eWOM intention, and purchase intention. In addition, there are differences of perceived consumption value among the consumers' awareness level and purchase experience. Taken together, the results of this study provide researchers and practitioners with a deeper understanding of consumers' values, beliefs, attitudes, and behavioral intentions towards upcycling fashion products.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.14 no.8
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• pp.416-430
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• 2014

As the online word-of-mouth(WOM) using SNS has significant influence on consumer decision-making, the hospitality industry including the restaurant industry has actively used SNSs as one of major marketing tools. While researchers have focused on impacts of the online WOM, there is little research on motivations to provide WOM and its impacts on the WOM providers. The purpose of this study is to examine whether sharing the restaurant experience on Facebook, the representative SNSs, can change customer satisfaction and intentions to revisit and recommended and whether the type of motivations to share the restaurant experiences on Facebook affects customer satisfaction and intentions to revisit and recommend. The total of 260 college students volunteered to participate in this study. They first visited a restaurant and completed surveys twice before and after sharing their restaurant experience on Facebook. According to the study results, the levels of satisfaction, intention to revisit and intention to recommend after sharing the restaurant experience were found to be higher than before sharing the experience. This study also found that people who shared their restaurant experience for nostalgia were more likely to be satisfied with the restaurant services and have a higher level of intentions to revisit and recommend the restaurant. Theoretical and managerial implications as well as limitations and future research directions are discussed.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.21 no.7
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• pp.93-104
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• 2021

Most of the existing studies on the volume and valence of the eWOM (electronic word of mouth) about movies and box-office revenues were conducted using online actual data (secondary data) at Yahoo Movies, IMDB.com, Naver Movies, etc. However, it is difficult to grasp psychological variables from online actual data. Therefore, existing studies using online actual data could not identify the causal relationship among volume, valence and psychological variables. This study fills this gap in the literature. This study aims to examine the direct and indirect effects (i.e. mediating effect) of the volume and valence of online reviews about movies on purchase intention through review credibility as a mediator. We conducted a survey on the South Korean consumers and a structural equation modeling. The outcomes show that the total effects of both volume and valence are significant. In addition, volume has an indirect effect only (i.e. full mediating effect) on purchase intention through review credibility, but valence has both direct and indirect effects (i.e. partial mediating effect) on purchase intention through review credibility. The theoretical and practical implications for these results are presented.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.131-154
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• 2013

New internet technologies have created a revolutionary new platform which allows consumers to make decision about product price and quality quickly and provides information about themselves through the transcript of online reviews. By expressing their feelings toward products or services on virtual opinion platforms, users extend their influence into cyberspace as electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM). Existing research indicates that an impact of eWOM on the consumer decision process is influential. For both academic researchers and practitioners, investigating this phenomenon of information sharing in online website is essential given the increasing number of consumers using them as sources of purchase decisions. It is worthwhile to examine the extent to which opinion seekers are willing to accept and adopt online reviews and which factors encourage adoption. Discerning the most motivating aspects of information adoption in particular, could help electronic marketers better promote their brand and presence on the internet. The objectives of this study are to investigate how online WOM influences a persons' purchase decision by discovering which factors encourage information adoption. Especially focused on the self-efficacy, this research investigates how self-efficacy affects on information usefulness and adoption of online information. Although people are exposed to same review or comment about product or service, some accept the reviews while others do not. We notice that accepting online reviews mainly depends on the person's preference or personal characteristics. This study empirically examines this issue by using cognitive dissonance theory. Specifically, in the movie industry, we address few questions-is always positive WOM generating positive effect? What if the movie isn't the person's favorite genre? What if the person who is very self-assertive so doesn't take other's opinion easily? In these cases of cognitive dissonance, is always WOM generating same result? While many studies have focused on one direct of WOM which indicates positive (or negative) informative reviews or comments generate positive (or negative) results and more (or less) profits, this study investigates not only directional properties of WOM but also how people change their opinion towards product or service positive to negative, negative to positive through the online WOM. An experiment was conducted quantitatively by using a sample of 168 users who have experience within the online movie review site, 'Naver Movie'. Users were required to complete a survey regarding reviews and comments taken from the real movie page. The data reflected user's perceptions of online WOM information that determined users' adoption level. Analysis results provide empirical support for the proposed theoretical perspective. When user can't agree with the opinion of online WOM information, in other words, when cognitive dissonance between online WOM information and users' preference occurs, perceived self-efficacy significantly decreases customers' perception of usefulness. And this perception of usefulness plays an important role in determining users' intention to adopt online WOM information. Most of researches have been concentrated on characteristics of online WOM itself such as quality or vividness of information, credibility of source and direction of online WOM, etc. for describing effect of online WOM, but our results suggest that users' personal character (e.g., self-efficacy) plays decisive role for acceptance of online WOM information. Higher self-efficacy means lower possibility to accept the information that represents counter opinion because of cognitive dissonance, whereas the people that have lower self-efficacy are willing to accept the online WOM information as true and refer to purchase decision. This study suggests a model for understanding role of direction of online WOM information. Also, our result implicates the importance of online review supervision and personalized information service by confirming switching opinion negative to positive is more difficult than positive to negative through the online WOM information. This implication would help marketers to manage online reviews of their products or services.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.49-69
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• 2009

With the proliferation of electronic commerce, online transactions have become a norm. Its enormous potential, however, can be truly realized if consumers feel comfortable facing invisible sellers over the Internet, a virtual business channel. Trust has been identified as a key component in many e-Commerce studies. The purpose of this study is to find out which factors play a major role in building buyer trust and how the build-up trust affects buyer's purchase intention in online used car transactions. Based on the information asymmetry, TAM (Technology Acceptance Model), and the trust theory, our research model includes factors such as a buyer's propensity-to-trust, institutional characteristics (inspection and warranty policy), word-of-mouth referral, perceived size, and perceived benefits as independent variables. The model also includes trust as a mediate variable, purchase intention as a dependent variable, and perceived quality risk as a moderate variable. The research model is tested by analyzing 448 sample data gathered from used car websites. The result shows that the trust has significant effects on the online purchase intention, and institutional characteristics have been identified as one of the most significant factors for trust building in used car websites. For those who perceive quality risk high, actual purchasing behavior occurs only when they have trust on the used car websites, indicating that trust plays a vital role as a mediate variable. This study suggests that buyer trust on the used car websites is important to increase buyer's online purchase behavior.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.175-185
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• 2020

Mobile shopping has been settled down as one of the general shopping methods, good enough to be called new normal today. Contrary to the initial stage for researching the shopping in online environment, the factors more important today must be changed quite a lot. Thus, this study aimed to select the service quality factors regarded as important in mobile shopping, to examine their effects on consumers' rational-emotional evaluation, and also to understand a series of influence relations led to the purchase intention and word of mouth effect in the future, and then obtained the significant results. In the results of this study, only the Personalization and responsiveness of service quality had positive(+) effects on the consumer sentiment, and the consumer sentiment had positive(+) effects on the consumer behavior. Such results verified that the Personalization and responsiveness would be important factors to consumers. Also, when the consumer satisfaction is high, the consumer behavior would be positive too.

• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.154-168
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• 2019

The present study investigated fashion Instagram marketing, applying the concept of gamification. It set out to examine the following specific issues: 1) perceptions of flow, pleasures, dimensions of game dynamics (challenge, competition, achievement, reward, relationships among participants, and relationships between brands and consumers), and consumer responses based on frequency and involvement in exercise; 2) the effects of game dynamics dimensions on flow and pleasure; and 3) the effects of flow and pleasure on consumer responses. An online survey was used to gather data and the study analyzed a total of 200 responses. The results of the study were as follows. Perception differences were found only in relation to exercise involvement. Competition, relationships among participants, and relationships between brands and customers positively predicted flow. Among the dimensions of game dynamics, challenge, competition, reward, relationships among participants, and relationships between brands and consumers positively influenced pleasure. In addition, the study also found that pleasure and flow had positive effects on intention to participate and brand loyalty. Meanwhile, only pleasure predicted word-of-mouth. These findings suggest that fashion brands implementing Instagram as a marketing channel should seek to stimulate pleasure and fun to provoke positive consumer responses. Furthermore, the findings of the study provide practical and useful insights for fashion brands implementing Instagram marketing.

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.21-42
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• 2018

Purpose This study investigates that the routes of psychological ownership in Fanpage and the effect of psycholoigical ownership on customer loyalty based on psychological ownership theory. Fans are customers who clicked 'Like' on the fan page. These fans have a lot of friends on Facebook, so the word-of-mouth is more effective than other online communities. Therefore, it is necessary for fans to have psychological ownership, actively responding to the fan pages, and recommending them to friends. However, previous social network service studies have overlooked the importance of psychological ownership. In this study, we examine what factors can increase psychological ownership and show that customer loyalty can be enhanced through psychological ownership. Design/methodology/approach This study was designed to investigate the structural relationship between Fanpage Familiarity, Interaction(Customer-Brand interaction and Customer-customer interaction), Psychological Ownerhisp, and Customer Loyalty. Structural equation modeling with SmartPLS2.0 was used to analyze the relationships in the research model. Findings The results showed that Fanpage Familiarity and Customer-customer interaction is positively related with Psychological Ownership. However, Customer-Brand interaction did not influence Psychological Ownership. Psychological Ownership has a positive impact on Intention to Continue Using Fanpage and Recommend.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.1-15
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• 2022

Purpose: In the restaurant sector, it has been known that consumers' positive perception of brands influences their positive WOM intention, and information sources play an important role in increasing credibility by enhancing consumer awareness and developing differentiated brands. This study examines the effects of information sources (e.g., advertisement, WOM, SNS) on trust (cognitive and affective) and, WOM and eWOM intention in the restaurant context. In the model, cognitive and affective trust play mediating roles in the relationships between information sources (e.g., advertisement, WOM, SNS) WOM and eWOM intention. Research design, data, and methodology: Research models and hypotheses were developed according to the research direction. The survey questionnaire items were developed and used appropriately according to the contents of this paper based on prior studies. All constructs were measured with multiple items developed and validated in prior studies. A total of 502 responses were collected from an online survey. The research model was evaluated using SmartPLS 4.0. Frequency analysis was performed to understand the demographic characteristics of the survey respondents. The reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity were assessed using measurement model analysis. The proposed model was verified using the structural equation model. Results: Advertisement, WOM, and SNS information sources all had a positive effect on affective trust, whereas only WOM had a significant effect on cognitive trust. In addition, affective trust had a positive effect on cognitive trust and eWOM intention but did not affect WOM intention. Finally, cognitive trust was found to have a positive effect on both WOM intention and eWOM intention. Conclusions: This study redefines the concept of where restaurant service companies should focus when providing consumers with information about their products and services. As a result, the conceptual framework of positive word of mouth intention to increase new customer visits to the restaurant brand has been expanded. In addition, this study not only presents an information source management strategy for restaurant brands, but also presents practical implications for resource allocation guidelines for customer management in the restaurant sector.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Culture
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.666-676
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• 2012

The purpose of this study was to propose effective marketing communication strategies for overseas Korean restaurants through a multilateral comparison analysis of American, Chinese, and Japanese consumers' attitudes towards communication media and Korean restaurants. The survey was written in English, Chinese, and Japanese, with guideline for surveyors, and conducted using both online and offline methods. Samples were collected from five major cities - Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo, Beijing and Shanghai, which are the foothold for the globalization of Korean food. When it comes to attitudes towards communication media, word-of-mouth showed a high mean value, indicating it as the most useful and reliable media recognized by consumers who visited Korean restaurants. Furthermore, the necessity of recognizing the importance of visual communication in the physical environment of Korean restaurants and specialized websites, featuring restaurants and gourmet food, was observed. Consumers in all three nations chose word-of-mouth as the most useful and reliable media for learning about Korean restaurants. In addition, American consumers highly depended on signage and restaurant exteriors. Chinese consumers highly recognized the usefulness and reliability of offline media, such as newspapers, magazines, and events, while Japanese consumers considered online media, such as gourmet websites, blogs and social networks, as useful and reliable sources. A significantly positive attitude and high value was observed in all who had visited Korean restaurants. American and Japanese consumers had a significantly higher rate of intention to visit Korean restaurants in the future and to tell others about their satisfaction with Korean restaurants. Meanwhile, the average rate of prior preference for Korean restaurants (when choosing restaurants) was the lowest in all three countries. This study is useful for both the Korean government and food enterprises abroad to plan and develop marketing communication strategies properly for overseas Korean restaurants.