• Journal of Venture Innovation
• /
• v.6 no.1
• /
• pp.1-16
• /
• 2023

Due to the progress of the 4th industrial revolution and the COVID-19 pandemic, the subscription economy was rapidly expanding. In particular, the subscription economy was expected to expand further as the servicing of products(servitization) rapidly progresses. In this study, we tried to empirically analyze the factors that promote and hinder the spread of the subscription economy from the consumer's point of view. To this end, based on the Service Profit Chain (SPC) model, which identified mechanisms leading from quality to satisfaction, loyalty, and performance, a research model was established by combining the framework of the Value-based Adoption Model (VAM), which covers both benefit and sacrifice factors. Usefulness and convenience were derived as benefit factors, and perceived risks and perceived costs were derived as sacrifice factors. The effects of these factors on satisfaction and continuous use intention were analyzed. For empirical analysis, a survey was conducted targeting people who have experience in subscription economy, and 300 effective samples were analyzed. The analysis was performed as a structural equation model using AMOS 24. As a result of the empirical study, it was found that convenience had a significant positive (+) effect on satisfaction. Perceived risk and perceived cost were analyzed to have a negative (-) effect on satisfaction. On the other hand, usefulness was found to have no significant effect on satisfaction. The influences affecting satisfaction were in the order of perceived cost, convenience, and perceived risk. Satisfaction was found to have a significant positive (+) effect on continuous use intention. The results of this study were considered meaningful in that they broadened the horizons of research by combining existing validated models at the academic level and testing their validity, and found that perceived cost was still an important factor at the practical level.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
• /
• v.18 no.1
• /
• pp.1-31
• /
• 2008

Trust is central to human relationships, at all times and places. The importance of trust is fundamental in all areas of human life, not only in the area of business administration. 2,500 years ago in China, Confucius taught that the foundation of politics was the trust of the people, more important even than military strength or the supply of food. Shakespeare's play, "Much Ado about Nothing' is about trust and deception. These days, trust and transparency in a commercial organization's business culture form the basis of the 'social capital' by which that organization increases its productivity. A successful company raises productivity by the accumulation of social capital, derived from a trust relationship between business partners, and between the company and consumers. Trust is the crucial factor. At the national level, building trust determines a nation's competitiveness. For a company, long term trust relationships with customers are essential for its survival in a business environment of rapid change. Such relationships, based on trust, are important assets to ensure a company's competitive advantage, and need to be organic to that company's business culture. Because of this importance, trust relationships have been studied in diverse areas within business administration, and especially within marketing, where they form the basis of a successful relationship between producer and consumer. However, what has been lacking is a unified definition of trust. Research has been conducted on the basis of various definitions and models. The majority of researchers have not considered the multidimensional character of the concept of trust until now. Approaches based on a one dimensional model have undermined the value of research results. Furthermore, researchers have only considered trust and trustworthiness as a single component. The majority of research has explored the consequences of perceived trust for outcomes such as loyalty or cooperation, but has neglected the effects of trustworthiness upon the mechanisms of consumer trust. This study focuses on the dimension of trust from such a perspective. It seeks to verify the effect of trust on customer intentions by breaking it down into three separate components: 1) the salesperson, 2) the product/service, and 3) the company. The purposes of this paper are as follows: Firstly, we review the multidimensional nature of trust objects: the salesperson, the product/service, and the company. Secondly, we analyze the relationship between multidimensional trust and trustworthiness. Thirdly, we analyze the connection between trust and repeat purchase intentions for the maintenance of long term relationships. For these purposes the author has developed several hypotheses as follows: H1-1: The competence of a salesperson is positively associated with the trust given by the consumer to the salesperson. H1-2: The benevolence of a salesperson is positively associated with the trust given by the consumer to the salesperson. H2-1: The competence of product/service is positively associated with the trust given by the consumer to the product/service. H2-2: The benevolence of product/service is positively associated with the trust given by the consumer to the product/service. H3-1: The reputation of a company is positively associated with the trust given by the consumer to the company. H3-2: The physical environment of a company is positively associated with the trust given by the consumer to the company. H4-1: Trust in a salesperson is positively associated with repeat purchase intentions. H4-2: Trust in a product/service is positively associated with repeat purchase intentions. H4-3: Trust in a company is positively associated with repeat purchase intentions. The data was compiled from 366 questionnaires. 500 questionnaires were collected, but some of the data was considered unsuitable and inappropriate. The subjects of the survey were male and female customers purchasing products at department stores in Seoul, Daegu and Gyeongbuk. It was carried out between Oct. 25 and 29, 2007. The data was analyzed by frequency analysis using SPSS 12.0 and structural equation modeling using LISREL 8.7. The result of the overall model analysis is as follows: Chi-Square=445.497, d.f.=185, p-value=0.0, GFI=.901, RMSEA=.0617, NNFI=.986, NFI=.981, CFI=.989, AGFI=.864, RMR=.0872. The results of the overall model analysis were coherent. It was found that trust is a multi-dimensional construct, that each of the dimensions of trust are meaningful influences on customer's repurchase intention. Trust in a company may be the most relevant, while trust in a product/service and a salesperson may be less relevant to repurchase intentions. The effective factors in determining trust in a salesperson and a company's product/service were found to be competence and benevolence. Factors in determining trust in a company were its reputation and physical environment, and the relationship of each effective trust factor has been verified in this research. As a result, it was found that competence and benevolence have a meaningful influence on trust in a salesperson and in product/service. It was also found that a company's reputation influences the overall trust in the company significantly but a company's physical environment does not have much effect.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
• /
• v.24 no.3
• /
• pp.325-344
• /
• 2014

Technical support of Window XP ended in March, 8, 2014, and it makes OS(Operating System) users fall in a state of confusion. Sudden decision making of OS upgrade and replacement is not a simple problem. Firms need to change the long term capacity plan in enterprise IS management, but they are pressed for time and cost to complete it. Individuals can not help selecting the second best plan, because the following OSs of Window XP are below expectations in performances, new PC sales as the opportunities of OS upgrade decrease, and the potential risk of OS technical support ending had not announced to OS users at the point of purchase. Microsoft as the OS vendors had not presented precaution or remedy for this confusion. Rather, Microsoft announced that the technical support of the other following OSs of Wndow XP such as Window 7 would ended in two years. This conflict between OS vendor and OS users could not happen in one time, but could recur in recent future. Although studies on the ways of OS user protection policy would be needed to escape from this conflict, few prior studies had conducted this issue. This study had challenge to cautiously investigate in such OS user's reactions as the confirmation with OS user's expectation in the point of purchase, three types of justice perception on the treatment of OS vendor, psychological contract violation, satisfaction and the other betrayal behavioral intention in the case of Window XP technical support ending. By adopting the justice perception on this research, and by empirically validating the impact on OS user's reactions, I could suggest the direction of establishing OS user protection policy of OS vendor. Based on the expectation-confirmation theory, the theory of justice, literatures about psychological contract violation, and studies about consumer betrayal behaviors in the perspective of Herzberg(1968)'s dual factor theory, I developed the research model and hypothesis. Expectation-confirmation theory explain that consumers had expectation on the performance of product in the point of sale, and they could satisfied with their purchase behaviors, when the expectation could have confirmed in the point of consumption. The theory of justice in social exchange argues that treatee could be willing to accept the treatment by treater when the three types of justice as distributive, procedural, and interactional justice could be established in treatment. Literatures about psychological contract violation in human behaviors explains that contracter in a side could have the implied contract (also called 'psychological contract') which the contracter in the other side would sincerely execute the contract, and that they are willing to do vengeance behaviors when their contract had unfairly been broken. When the psychological contract of consumers had been broken, consumers feel distrust with the vendors and are willing to decrease such beneficial attitude and behavior as satisfaction, loyalty and repurchase intention. At the same time, consumers feel betrayal and are willing to increase such retributive attitude and behavior as negative word-of-mouth, complain to the vendors, complain to the third parties for consumer protection. We conducted a scenario survey in order to validate our research model at March, 2013, when is the point of news released firstly and when is the point of one year before the acture Window XP technical support ending. We collected the valid data from 238 voluntary participants who are the OS users but had not yet exposed the news of Window OSs technical support ending schedule. The subject had been allocated into two groups and one of two groups had been exposed this news. The data had been analyzed by the MANOVA and PLS. MANOVA results indicate that the OSs technical support ending could significantly decrease all three types of justice perception. PLS results indicated that it could significantly increase psychological contract violation and that this increased psychological contract violation could significantly reduce the trust and increase the perceived betrayal. Then, it could significantly reduce satisfaction, loyalty, and repurchase intention, and it also could significantly increase negative word-of-month intention, complain to the vendor intention, and complain to the third party intention. All hypothesis had been significantly approved. Consequently, OS users feel that the OSs technical support ending is not natural value added service ending, but the violation of the core OS purchase contract, that it could be the posteriori prohibition of OS user's OS usage right, and that it could induce the psychological contract violation of OS users. This study would contributions to introduce the psychological contract violation of the OS users from the OSs technical support ending in IS field, to introduce three types of justice as the antecedents of psychological contract violation, and to empirically validate the impact of psychological contract violation both on the beneficial and retributive behavioral intentions of OS users. For practice, the results of this study could contribute to make more comprehensive OS user protection policy and consumer relationship management practices of OS vendor.

• Journal of Distribution Science
• /
• v.9 no.1
• /
• pp.39-48
• /
• 2011

One of the major reasons for fierce competition among firms is that they strive to increase their own market shares in the same market with similar and apparently undifferentiated products in terms of quality and perceived benefit. Due to such changes in the marketing environment, differentiated after-sales service and diversified promotion strategies have become more important in the race to gain a competitive advantage. Price discount is one of the popular promotion strategies that most retailers use, especially to increase sales, but offering a price discount does not always lead to the expected result. If marketers apply an identical price-promotion strategy without considering the characteristic differences in products and consumer preferences, the discounted price itself may make people skeptical about the quality of the product. Moreover, the changes in perceived value may appear differently depending on factors such as consumer involvement. This implies that variables such as the level of consumer involvement, brand loyalty, and external reference prices, in reality, would have different effects on how consumers perceive the value of price discounts. The variables that affect consumers' perceived values and buying decisions are diverse and complicated. Several studies have examined the effects of such variables as external reference price, selling price, and brand on consumers' perceived value of products. Results have not shown consistent patterns. Therefore, we must note that the factors affecting consumers' value perceptions and buying behaviors are diverse and that the results of studies on the same dependent variable come out differently depending on what that variable is. This study focused on the level of consumer involvement as a salient variable that supposedly affects the perceived value of a product, willingness to buy, and search intentions. We tried to examine whether a price discount affects the perceived value-such as perceived acquisition value and perceived transaction value-in different ways depending on the level of consumer involvement. In addition, we proposed managerial implications that marketers need to consider as a whole, for instance, product attributes, brand loyalty, and involvement and then established a differentiated pricing strategy, case by case, in order to effectively enhance consumers' perceived values. As a result, we found that perceived transaction value positively affects perceived acquisition value and when discounting the price of a high-involvement product enhances the consumer's willingness to buy, but perceived acquisition value does not affect the search intentions significantly. In the case of discounting prices of low-involvement products, on the other hand, the perceived transaction value has a positive effect on the willingness to buy, but the negative effect of perceived acquisition value on the search intentions was not significant. We suppose that people doubt a product's quality because of a declined perceived quality derived from a price discount. Even though the price discount enhanced the transaction value, people eventually increased their level of searching for additional product information. From the results of this study, we suggest that marketers ought to establish an appropriate value-enhancing strategy based on the understanding of which perceived value consumers rely on more when they conduct purchasing behavior because consumers perceive the degree of importance of acquisition value or transaction value differently, depending on their level of involvement.

• Journal of Distribution Science
• /
• v.9 no.3
• /
• pp.73-82
• /
• 2011

This study presents an effective and distinctive marketing strategy through the implementation of the aesthetic art marketing communication technique of storytelling. The reason applying art to marketing is effective is that it gives "class" and aesthetic beauty to the brand's image, which will lead to an increase in revenue and loyalty of consumers. The story stands in for the brand's subject of "desire." Luxury brand customers not only consume high-quality products, require the utmost in service, and value of the brand, they also appreciate the story the brand is telling. The story, combined with art, is called art marketing communication; it makes the brand more unique through its enhanced visual elements. The study discusses art collaboration, art exhibition, a transforming architecture project, art advertisement, a flagship store, and a human resource training center. Based on the "desire," I adopted the element and principle of storytelling. By visualizing the brand with a symbol, the company is able to relate to consumers' sentimentality. Through storytelling art marketing communication, and the strategy using relevance of brand and artist's popularity, the research shows efficient art marketing influences to the brand's image. The results of the research indicate that by using adequate art marketing communication that best reflects the identity and story of the luxury brand, it produces great results; the research also demonstrated, in various ways, that art marketing will succeed. The case showed the following outcomes. First, consumers have a tendency to choose a brand that is associated with an empathizing story. World renowned brands see through the market's "desires" for unique stories, and they also provide the ability to amuse consumers. The story in a product will become an important competitive element in future markets. Second, the art marketing communication applying a story rendered a brand with distinction. The most effective art marketing communications are art collaboration, art exhibition, locomotive architecture project, and others that are adopted as various means. Third, the brand's products were considered as an art piece, which led to not only strengthening the loyalty of consumers but also an increase in sales. In addition, the company could sustain a premium price for the goods sold. By adapting art to a brand's tradition, an innovative and creative new product provides consumer satisfaction, and producing goods in limited editions creates enthusiastic collectors. Fourth, this study suggests an abridged report, implication, limitation of the study, and directions for further research. Referring to the case for the adaptation of luxury brands, efficient art marketing strategies considering Korean company brand and efficiently study preceding Korean company brand art marketing strategy could be proposed.

• Journal of Distribution Science
• /
• v.10 no.1
• /
• pp.5-10
• /
• 2012

Currently, the rewards programs offered by many companies to strengthen customer relationships have been working quite well. In addition, many companies' rewards programs, designed for stabilizing revenue, are recognized to be effective. However, these rewards programs are not significantly differentiated between companies and there are no accurate conclusions currently, which can be made about their effects. Because of this, a company with a customer rewards program may not comprehend the true level of active participation. In this environment some companies' rewards programs inadvertently hinder business profitability as a side effect while attempting to increase customer loyalty. In fact, airline and oil companies pass on the financial cost of their programs to the customer, and as a result, they have been criticized publicly. The result of this is that the corporations with bad rewards programs tend to get a bad image. In this study of stores' rewards programs, we centered our focus on the design of the program. The main problem in this study is to recognize the financial value of the rewards program and whether it can create a competitive edge for the companies despite the cost issues experienced by them. Customers receiving financial rewards for their business may be just as satisfied with a particular company or store versus those who are not, and the program, perhaps, does not form a distinctive competitive advantage. When the customer is deciding between competing companies to secure their product needs with, we wanted to figure out how much of an affect a valuable reward program had on their decision making. To evaluate this, we set the first hypothesis as, "based on the level of involvement of the customers, there is a difference between customers' preferences for rewards programs." In the results of Experiment 1 we saw that in a financial compensation program for high-involvement groups and low-involvement groups, significant differences appeared and Hypothesis 1 was partially supported. As for the second hypothesis that "customers will have different preferences between a financial rewards programs (SE) and a joint rewards programs (JE)," the analysis showed that the preference for JE was significantly higher than that for other programs. In addition, through Experiment 2, we were able to find meaningful results, which revealed that consumers have shown a significant difference in their preferences between SE and JE. The purpose of these experiments was to enable the designing of a rewards program by learning how to enhance service information distribution and strengthen customer relationships. From the results, there should be a great amount of value for future service-related endeavors and academic research programs. The research is significant, because the results can be found to have a positive effect on reward program designs however, it does have the following limitations. First, this study was performed using an experiment, and all experiments have limitations. Second, although there was an individual evaluation and a joint evaluation, setting a proper evaluation criteria was difficult. In this study, 1,000 Korean won (KRW) in the individual evaluation had a value of 2 points, and, in the joint evaluation, 1,000 KRW had a value of 1 point. There may have been alternative ways to differentiate the evaluations to obtain the proper results. In this study, since there was no funding, the experiments were performed orally however, this was complementary to the study. Third, the subjects who participated in this experiment were students. Conducting this study through experimentation was unavoidable for us, and future research should be conducted using an actual program with the target customers.

• Korean Journal of Legislative Studies
• /
• v.22 no.2
• /
• pp.113-156
• /
• 2016

Media scholars take a lion stake in power circle. Not only do they take a part in media policies but seize prestigious positions like board members in Korea Communication Commission(KCC). Unfortunately, though, little has been known about who they are, what qualifications they have, and whether they meet public interests. This paper attempts to unveil the mechanism of those politicized intellectuals who are specialized on the media. Two categories divided into 'representative' and 'expertise' are employed for this purpose. On the one hand, the representative means the degree of committment into such public services as participation in conferences or non-profit organizations. On the other hand, the number of research articles, books and projects belong to the expertise. Evaluation levels consist of 'excellence, good and average' were allocated to those scholars who are(were) in 'Power Hole,' where decision makings come into being. Some interesting observations were made though this study. First of all, such criteria as representative and expertise vaguely suggested by the laws were hardly fit into those intellectuals, Rarely did they commit into public service let alone showing vigilance in academic activities. Secondly, both ideological loyalty and political activities in line with the government had much to do with taking such positions. Thirdly, not surprisingly, it showed that to graduate from Seoul National University and have Ph.D. degree from U.S.A. was one of the most essential factors. In final, most of them were very good at taking advantage of the press in way of boosting their publicity. To attend at policy making processes either in form of board members or advisers is inevitable for media experts. However, as shown in this study, such qualification of public service and academic eagerness shouldn't be underestimated. Academic integrity not selling intelligence solely for private interests needs to be protected as well. The authors hope this study to provide a valuable opportunity to establish a kind of ethical standards in participating into politics.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
• /
• v.13 no.2
• /
• pp.219-243
• /
• 2004

Generally, electricity market has monopoly market structure because of need of enormous investment for infrastructure. However, the introduction of competition in network industry as electricity is a tendency of the world with decreasing the effects of economy of scale due to the advancement of technology. Now, electricity industry restructuring is in progress but the competition in electricity retail market is not in force yet in Korea. Whether a effective competition exist or not is very important to policy decision maker who drive restructuring, but there are small numbers of quantitative researches on that. In this study, we estimated the effectiveness of competition in the electricity retail market through switching costs. If switching costs are high, consumers actually can be locked in incumbent firm in spite of introduction of competition. Therefore switching is a critical factor to determine effectiveness of competition and to estimate the size of switching costs quantitatively can proffer the information about whether the competition in the electricity retail market is effective or not in the future. We estimated switching costs using consumer' stated-preference data by conjoint analysis. In according to estimation results, the cost of switching process is not so high, but the relative brand loyalty of an incumbent company is significantly high. And the price is considered as the most important factor choosing an electric service commodity. Based on the empirical results, it is possible to analyze the relationship between suppliers' competitiveness resulted from management efficiency and customers' switching possibilities. The paper therefore provides guidance for suppliers in deciding to enter into retail competition and for policy makers in introducing retail competition. And it has a significance of estimating the switching costs directly.

• Journal of Distribution Science
• /
• v.10 no.10
• /
• pp.35-43
• /
• 2012

Purpose - The current analysis has been done in order to verify the difference between consumer attitudes on the distributor's PB products in terms of practical shopping value and attitudes about the product according to its perceived quality. Research design, data, and methodology - The target respondents of this study were those who have bought PB products at large-scale discount stores within the past six months. We asked homemakers, office workers, and students who live in Seoul or Daejon to respond to a questionnaire by filling out self-evaluations, and collected the completed questionnaires. To test the hypothesis, a t-test was carried out by group for 25 percent of the high and low rankings, including a quarter of the total respondents, to verify attitudes toward products and brands, purchase satisfaction, and re-purchase intention according to the practical shopping value and recognized quality of PB products. A variance analysis was conducted to see if there were differences among groups in terms of practical shopping value and perceived quality. Scheffe's back testing was used to identify differences between groups. Results - The result of the investigation of consumer attitudes according to practical shopping value is as follows. First, it was verified that consumer attitudes about PB products increase as practical shopping value increases. Second, there was no significant. Third, it was verified that repurchase intentions for PB products get higher as the practical shopping value of the consumer increases. The following is the result of the investigation of consumer attitudes according to the perceived quality of PB products. First, it was verified that the product attitude improves as the perceived quality of PB products increases. Second, the research confirmed that the brand attitude improves as the perceived quality of PB products increases. Third, consumer satisfaction is higher when the perceived quality of PB products is high. Fourth, this study verified that repurchase intentions for PB products are higher as the perceived quality of the product increases. Finally, the results of identifying differences between groups for perceived quality and shopping value are as follows. It was identified that there were differences in shopping value according to the characteristics of the groups. However, perceived quality does not change according to the characteristics of groups. Conclusions - These results have practical implications for the marketing strategy of PB products in order to satisfy consumer demands and provide a differentiated service by the distributor. In addition, it is suggested that a communication strategy may be necessary to increase brand loyalty and ensure the continual growth and value creation of PB products as symbolic products for distributors.

• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
• /
• v.16 no.4
• /
• pp.197-220
• /
• 2011

The smartphone is simply beyond the means of communication equipment, to line up the turning point of mobile convergence, is recognized as a service tool of new concept the camera, game, multimedia function, digital multimedia broadcasting, mobile internet etc, that use of smartphone is working toward developed a variety and new business models. The study is empirically studied casualties that self-determination influences flow and satisfaction which is intrinsic motivation of smartphone. There are many studies on flow, is intrinsic motivation, influencing satisfaction and Loyalty, but there are little studies which variables influences flow. this study is explore causality of autonomy, competence, relatedness which are major variables of self-determination theory that studied factors effecting intrinsic motivation influencing flow and satisfaction. This study developed a research model to explain the use of smartphone, and collected 670 survey responses from the office workers of seoul S company who had experiences with such smartphone. To prove the validity of the proposed research model, SEM analysis is applied with valid 670 questionnaires. The results, firstly, autonomy positively influences flow. secondly, competence significantly influences flow. thirdly, relatedness significantly influenced flow. also, upper above results shows that flow influences satisfaction.