• 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 Distribution Science
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.47-53
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• 2016

Purpose - The objective of this study is to investigate the dynamic relationships among Advertising Cost (AD), Newly Registered Users(NRU), and Buying Users(BU) of Social Network Game(SNG). SNG is getting pervasive mainly due to the rapid growth of mobile game and Social Network Service(SNS). It would be helpful for marketing researchers interested in SNG and related practitioners to understand the changes in AD, NRU, and BU with time as well as the effects on one another in mutual and dynamic way. Research Design, Data, and Methodology - Necessary data were collected from Social Network Game(SNG) company. AD, NRU, and BU are endogenous variables, but new event such as launching (event) and holidays(holiday) are exogenous dummy variables. Vector Auto regression (VAR) model is generally used to examine and capture the dynamic relationships among endogenous variables. VAR model can easily capture dynamic and endogenous relationships among time-series variables. Vector Auto regression with Exogenous variables(VARX) is a model in which exogenous variables are added to VAR. To investigate this study, VARX is applied. Result - By estimating the VARX model, the author finds that the past periods' NRU affect negatively and significantly the present AD, and past periods' BU have a positive and significant impact on the increase of AD. In addition, the author shows that the past periods' AD and BU have a positive and significant effect on the increase of NRU, and the past periods' AD affect positively and significantly BU. While the impact of AD on NRU happens after 3 or 4 days (carryover effect), that of AD on BU comes about within just 1 or 2 days (immediate effect). The effect of BU on NRU can be considered as word of mouth (WOM effect). Therefore, SNG companies can obtain not only the growth of revenue but also the increase of NRU by increasing BU. Through those results, the author can also find that there are significant interactions between endogenous variables. Conclusion - This study intends to investigate endogenous and dynamic relationships between AD, NRU, and BU. They also give managerial implications to practitioners for SNS and SNG firms. Through this study, it is found that there exist significant interactions and dynamic relationships between those three endogenous variables. The results of this study can have meaningful implications for practitioners and researchers of SNG. This research is unique in that it deals with "actual" field data and intend to find "actual" relationships among variables unlike other related existing studies which intend to investigate psychological factors affecting the intention of game usage and the intention of purchasing game items. This study is also meaningful by showing that the increase of BU can be a good strategy for "killing birds with one stone" (i.e., revenue growth and NRU increase). Although there are some limitations related with future research topics, this research contributes to the current research on SNG marketing in the above mentioned ways.

• 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.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.65-96
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• 2012

Brand has received much attention from considerable marketing research. When consumers consume product or services, they are exposed to a lot of brand related stimuli. These contain brand personality, brand experience, brand identity, brand communications and so on. A special kind of new crisis occasionally confronting companies' brand management today is the brand related rumor. An important influence on consumers' purchase decision making is the word-of-mouth spread by other consumers and most decisions are influenced by other's recommendations. In light of this influence, firms have reasonable reason to study and understand consumer-to-consumer communication such as brand rumor. The importance of brand rumor to marketers is increasing as the number of internet user and SNS(social network service) site grows. Due to the development of internet technology, people can spread rumors without the limitation of time, space and place. However relatively few studies have been published in marketing journals and little is known about brand rumors in the marketplace. The study of rumor has a long history in all major social science. But very few studies have dealt with the antecedents and consequences of any kind of brand rumor. Rumor has been generally described as a story or statement in general circulation without proper confirmation or certainty as to fact. And it also can be defined as an unconfirmed proposition, passed along from people to people. Rosnow(1991) claimed that rumors were transmitted because people needed to explain ambiguous and uncertain events and talking about them reduced associated anxiety. Especially negative rumors are believed to have the potential to devastate a company's reputation and relations with customers. From the perspective of marketer, negative rumors are considered harmful and extremely difficult to control in general. It is becoming a threat to a company's sustainability and sometimes leads to negative brand image and loss of customers. Thus there is a growing concern that these negative rumors can damage brands' reputations and lead them to financial disaster too. In this study we aimed to distinguish antecedents of brand rumor transmission and investigate the effects of brand rumor characteristics on rumor spread intention. We also found key components in personal acceptance of brand rumor. In contextualist perspective, we tried to unify the traditional psychological and sociological views. In this unified research approach we defined brand rumor's characteristics based on five major variables that had been found to influence the process of rumor spread intention. The five factors of usefulness, source credibility, message credibility, worry, and vividness, encompass multi level elements of brand rumor. We also selected product involvement as a control variable. To perform the empirical research, imaginary Korean 'Kimch' brand and related contamination rumor was created and proposed. Questionnaires were collected from 178 Korean samples. Data were collected from college students who have been experienced the focal product. College students were regarded as good subjects because they have a tendency to express their opinions in detail. PLS(partial least square) method was adopted to analyze the relations between variables in the equation model. The most widely adopted causal modeling method is LISREL. However it is poorly suited to deal with relatively small data samples and can yield not proper solutions in some cases. PLS has been developed to avoid some of these limitations and provide more reliable results. To test the reliability using SPSS 16 s/w, Cronbach alpha was examined and all the values were appropriate showing alpha values between .802 and .953. Subsequently, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted successfully. And structural equation modeling has been used to analyze the research model using smartPLS(ver. 2.0) s/w. Overall, R² of adoption of rumor is .476 and R² of intention of rumor transmission is .218. The overall model showed a satisfactory fit. The empirical results can be summarized as follows. According to the results, the variables of brand rumor characteristic such as source credibility, message credibility, worry, and vividness affect argument strength of rumor. And argument strength of rumor also affects rumor intention. On the other hand, the relationship between perceived usefulness and argument strength of rumor is not significant. The moderating effect of product involvement on the relations between argument strength of rumor and rumor W.O.M intention is not supported neither. Consequently this study suggests some managerial and academic implications. We consider some implications for corporate crisis management planning, PR and brand management. This results show marketers that rumor is a critical factor for managing strong brand assets. Also for researchers, brand rumor should become an important thesis of their interests to understand the relationship between consumer and brand. Recently many brand managers and marketers have focused on the short-term view. They just focused on strengthen the positive brand image. According to this study we suggested that effective brand management requires managing negative brand rumors with a long-term view of marketing decisions.