• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.70-79
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• 2010

There has been some research conducted that addressed immoral consumer behaviors in Korea; however, most of this research focused on purchasing counterfeits or shoplifting. High return rates of apparel and used apparel returns have been acknowledged as problem areas within the fashion industry. However, very few researchers have addressed this issue. Therefore, the goal of this research was to explore consumer's retail borrowing experience using a mixed methods approach. In study 1 Korean consumer's retail borrowing experiences was explored through focus group interviews. Findings informed study 2 an examination of apparel consumers' attitudes toward retail borrowing behavior via an online survey. Findings assist both researchers' and practitioners' understanding of retail borrowing behaviors and provide insight into retail borrowing issues in the apparel retail industry. For study 1, five focus-group interviews were conducted with seven panels of individuals that had retail borrowing experience within the past year. Thirty-five Korean consumers who lived in a metropolitan area participated in the focus group interviews. Most of consumers were in their 20's (n=21) and were women (n=24). Most participants purchased apparel items from a retail store and returned the worn items for either a full refund or exchanged the worn item for another item. Motives underlying retail borrowing behavior included social needs, job-related needs, fashion needs, and "smart shopping." Similar to existing research findings from other countries, social needs were the most frequently mentioned cause of retail borrowing in fashion stores. Consumers' moral values, attitude toward large corporations, and prior retail borrowing experience were mentioned as possible factors affecting consumers' retail borrowing behavior. For study 2, the questionnaire used to gather the data was developed based on the findings of part I and existing research. Questions concerning consumers' moral beliefs, sensation seeking tendencies, self-worth, past retail job experience, retail borrowing experience, and some demographic characteristics were included in the questionnaire. The data were collected via an online survey using an online panel provided by a commercial online research company located in Seoul, Korea. In order to obtain various consumers, a quota sample was (male: female=1:1, 20's:30's:40's=1:1:1, retail experience: no retail experience=1:3) obtained from the company. A total of 401 consumers who had shopped for apparel items during the prior 6 months participated in the online survey. The results indicated that 19.7% of the respondents reported they had experience borrowing fashion merchandise. Among these individuals, male borrowers (57%) outnumbered female borrowers. In terms of age distribution, x2 revealed that there was a statistical difference between respondents with and without retail borrowing experiences: 41.8% of the respondents with retail borrowing experience were in their 40's, while respondents without retail borrowing experience were evenly distributed between their 20's to 40's. There was also a significant difference between respondents with and without retail borrowing experience in terms of income: respondents with retail borrowing experience tended to have higher incomes than those without retail borrowing experience. T-tests were performed to compare respondents' fashion shopping behavior, moral beliefs, sensation-seeking tendencies, and attitudes toward retail borrowing behavior between participants with and without retail borrowing experience. As compared to those with no borrowing experience, respondents with experience tended to shop for fashion items more frequently and spent more on shopping for fashion items. Consumers with experience borrowing tended to have higher sensation-seeking tendencies than consumers without retail borrowing experience. A regression analysis revealed that attitudes toward fashion retail borrowing were negatively related to consumers' moral beliefs, but positively related to monthly fashion shopping frequency, sensation-seeking tendencies, and past fashion retail borrowing experience. Among these variables, past retail borrowing experience was the most significant predictor, followed by moral beliefs. This research serves as an initial attempt to address the motives that underlie retail borrowing behaviors and the factors affecting those behaviors. The findings of this study may facilitate an understanding of the consumer's retail borrowing, which will provide a basis for approaches that may help decrease retail borrowing and inappropriate returns at fashion retail stores. The findings may also provide materials for consumer education over the long term. In order to better understand fashion retail borrowing behavior, more research is needed in the future.

• Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association
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• v.49 no.1
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• pp.93-106
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• 2011

The purposes of this study were to segment female consumers on the basis of their clothing image preference, and to investigate the clothing purchasing behaviors of each segmented market. The research method was a questionnaire survey and participants were 700 women aged from 20's to 60's in Daejeon and Chungnam province. The questionnaire consisted of items for clothing image preference, clothing purchasing behaviors and the participants' demographic characteristics. The data were analyzed by Cronbach's ${\alpha}$, factor analysis, cluster analysis, ${\chi}^2$ test, ANOVA and the Scheff$\'{e}$ test. The results were as follows. Female consumers were divided into 7 types(sophisticated, natural, characteristic, elegant, active, feminine, and neat type) by clothing image preference. The 7 segmented market groups differed in many ways in terms of demographic characteristics and various clothing purchasing behaviors(clothing selection criteria, purchasing motives, fashion information sources, places of purchase, shopping frequency, and quantity and cost of purchases). The results of this study supported the view that clothing image preference can be a useful and effective variable for female market segmentation.

• Journal of the Korea Fashion and Costume Design Association
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.15-31
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• 2014

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of sociocultural attitudes toward appearance on male consumers' apparel buying behavior and appearance management behavior. The subjects were 353 males aged from 40 to 59 years old. The research method was a survey and the questionnaire consisted of sociocultural attitude toward appearance items, apparel buying behaviors items, appearance management behaviors items, and subjects' demographic characteristics items. The data were analyzed by Cronbach's ${\alpha}$, factor analysis, cluster analysis, multiple response analysis, ${\chi}2$ test, ANOVA and Duncan's multiple range test. The results were as follows. Three dimensions (appearance importance awareness, slimness importance awareness, internalization) were emerged on sociocultural attitude toward appearance, and subjects were divided into 4 groups(receptive, unreceptive, awareness, and internalized group) by this variable. The 4 groups by sociocultural attitude toward appearance showed many differences on apparel buying behaviors and appearance management behaviors. Receptive and internalized group more importantly regarded fashion trend and store display as apparel buying motives, design and trend as selection criteria, and did shopping to buy clothes more often than awareness and unreceptive group. Receptive and internalized group recognized higher the need for various appearance management behaviors and spent more expense to enhance their appearance than other groups.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.363-370
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• 2012

This study is for the development of fashion cultural products that simultaneously evolved with the contemporary use of traditional temple culture in addition, it analyzed the cultural products available in the Korean market. Methodology, this study conducted a literature review and empirical research. We targeted the cultural products carried at twelve web-based shopping malls for Buddhist cultural products and six souvenir shops in Korean Buddhist temples to collect data on those products in order to analyze the items, design motives, materials, and price ranges. The study results showed that interior items represented the largest portion of the targeted goods, followed by accessories/sundries, clothing/fashion items, stationery, and tableware. The most commonly used design motive was lotuses, followed by the images of Buddha or Buddhist Goddesses and Dharma. The most common materials include fibers, jewelry (such as gold and silver), wood, metals, ceramics, paper, and plastic. The most active price range was between KRW10,000 and KRW50,000, followed by less than KRW10,000 and KRW100,000 to less than KRW500,000. This study discovered the potential for traditional temple culture to advance it further in a contemporary manner and indicated the need to develop a wide variety of cultural products and emphasize its global acceptance.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.77-84
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• 2015

According to a recent survey, the sales amount of luxuries and imitations is getting larger. Especially young consumers in 2,30's have a strong desire to own luxuries, so I tried to build a theoretical base on the 20's consuming trend. Meanwhile, targeting university students who represent consumers in 20's, I investigated the recognition of luxuries, shopping experience, main shopping items, monthly spending money, and future purchase intention. I also investigated shopping experience of imitation, main shopping items, purchase reasons, and future purchase intention. I tried to suggest lots of academic and practical implications in marketing strategy building of luxury brand, aiming young consumers in 20's. On the social-psychological view point, young generation have relatively weak sense of control or self-efficacy. So, they are easily submerged in conspicuous consumption by the atmosphere around. As a result of empirical research, I found that Korean students recognized luxuries as excellent in quality, or the world famous brand. In particular, statistically significant gender difference was shown in the luxuries characteristics as the high-quality brand for male students and the world famous brand for female students. Most respondents have experience buying luxuries. And more monthly spending money, more experience they have. Respondents' purchased items were in order of fashion goods, clothing, watches/jewelry, cosmetics/perfume. And the statistically significant differences between gender and monthly spending money were shown. Not many respondents purchased luxuries imitations, and main purchased items were fashion goods. Most of purchase motives are price over quality and economy reason. The phenomena that the respondents of relatively high levels of monthly spending money had lots of luxuries imitations shopping experiences is interesting. Female students showed higher purchase intention for luxuries and imitations than male students. There was no statistically significant difference in grade level, but was found something interesting in monthly spending money. As monthly spending money increased, the purchase intention of luxuries increased, but the purchase intention of luxuries imitations decreased. However, non-linear trend was shown in the specific allowance level. This is replicate of the luxuries imitations purchase experience. Following studies will be needed for the exact interpretation for this. This study is an exploratory and descriptive, but can provide lots of fruitful academic and practical implications in formulating luxuries marketing strategies.

• Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.44-54
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• 1986

This study was aimed at investigating the health seeking behaviors of patients; For the purpose of analyzing the research theme we classified the study into two phase. First, the types of patients' health seeking behavior were categorized into a scheme according to what medical care resources were utilized in patients' coping process. Second, from patients' first visits to third visits to medical resources, we analyzed variations of factors which noted as crucial elements in constituting the patients' sickness career. To grasp the generalized characteristics from complicated empirical data, we limited the scope of our analysis to third stage of health seeking. A total of 121 persons who had beer suffering from chronic diseases more than 3 months was sampled among the residents of Banwol-Eup, the target Area of Korea University Health Project. The findings are as follows ; 1) In the course of visiting medical care resources, 34 different types of health seeking Behavior were found. From this result we inferred the idea that patients in Banwol-Eup had not any stable norms to cope with their pains. Clinics, hospital, pharmacy, Herb-doctors', folkways (self-treatment) were accessed by patients in orders. But more than half of patients who had utilized clinics or hospitals from their first to third visits, changed medical care resources to others, for example herb doctors or folkways, which had fundamentally different treatment models. Upon these two facts, the diversified types and capricious patterns in the health seeking behavior of Banwol patients, we observed a typical Shopping-Around phenomenon. 2) Factors which influenced patients' to their sickness career were changed along the courses of health seeking, from first to third visits as follows ; $\cdot$ Perceived seriousness of diseases were tended to decrease. $\cdot$ Professional medical personnel tended to be influencial in the patients' sickness career, (5.0%, 25.0% and 65.7%). The influence of the primary interaction groups such as parents, friends, neighbours, tended to decrease ; (90.9%, 71.2% and 30.0%). $\cdot$ The subjective reasons why to choose such a medical care resource were related to economic affordability and disease-itself as main motives. Credibility of health resources tended to increase 14.9%, 24.0% and 31.4 sequently. $\cdot$ Geographic accessibility factors did not change significantly. Most of patients had utilized health resources in Banwol and Anyang area. 3) Cultural inclination in the shopping-around phenomenon has shown difference among age groups. The age group' over 50 years' preferred traditional health resources to modern health resources. 4) Consistency of health seeking behavior on the shopping around phenomenon has shown difference according to the degrees of patients' economic affordability and those of psychological satisfaction toward modern health services. However, there were some restrictions in this thesis ; a) the study was limited to the 3rd health seeking career so it did not allow us to collect more informations after that, b) the study was not able to carry out causal analysis on patients health behavior determinated by explanatory model of health resources, and c) the study was not able to take into consideration of factors connected with social structural circumstances. Despite of restrictions described above, we are sure that this thesis would promote health providers' understanding toward patients' inclinations, through which they could provide efficient and accurate medical service.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.69-102
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• 2012

Owing to increased number of luxury brand users, both genuine and counterfeit luxury product consumption continues to increase every year. Luxury brand is defined as use or display of a particular branded products which brings the ownership prestige apart from its functional utility(Grossmand and Shapiro 1988). Some luxury brands have imitations sold in marketplace due to their popularity. These imitations or counterfeits have been jumping on the bandwagon of the upturn in sales of their originals. The purpose of our study is to understand consumer's underlying motives to consume luxury brands, genuine and or counterfeits. To do this, we propose functional theories of attitudes, decision-making styles, and life attitudes to form the determining causes for different consumption choices of luxury brands: genuine brands, counterfeit brands, both genuine and counterfeit brands, and no consumption on luxury brands types. In proposed causal pathways, we examine moderated effects of socio-psychological factors to further investigate if consumer profiles would exert influences in causal relationships. From the existing theories of functional attitudes: value-expressive and social-adjustive attitudes, we developed and introduced a new measure of rationality-consumptive attitude. From the existing eight decision-making characteristics of consumer styles inventory(CSI), three measures of high-quality, hedonic-shopping, and price-shopping styles were primarily applied in the study along with newly introduced measure of 'high-price' being added, which makes four total. Seven life attitude measures of life purpose, life control, will to meaning, goal seeking, future mean to fulfill, life satisfaction, and religiosity were applied. Finally, such socio-psychological measures as age, gender, marital status, income, and age-gap between couples were assumed to function as moderators. With 430 valid study samples, ages from 20s to 50s, with more females(316) than males(114), with average personal possessions of 5 genuine and 9 counterfeit luxury brands, we conducted questionnaire survey. Results indicated that social-adjustive function is totally disappeared in the relationship due to current social trend of widespread consumptions on both genuine and counterfeit brands which in turn, make consumers feel less special on wearing or carrying them unlike in the past. Self-expressive function and rationality-consumptive functions act as strong catalysts for genuine brand consumption and counterfeit brand consumption, respectively. On consumers' decision-making styles, high-price sublation is the most powerful indicator anticipating counterfeit consumption, even more powerful than personal incomes. In life attitude, the overall model fit was not validated, and only life control and life satisfaction are proven to be significant on both genuine and counterfeit product consumptions. Employment of socio-psychological factors in the model improved understanding of users further. Young consumers tend to go for genuine products over counterfeits. Consumers in different income groups; low, medium and high, all significantly consume genuine products for reasons of different decision-making styles. The results indicated that consumers whose personal disposition is predisposed to consume products in the form of reflection of his or her personality, go only for genuine brands for quality reason, while consumers who rationally consume products for its function or usability, go only for counterfeits for high-price sublation reason. Meanwhile, both product users support for high-price orientation who are not well off.

• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.323-346
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• 1995

The increasing number of senior citizens, combined with the power of purchasing due to discretionary income have vaulted the elderly into the position of an attractive future target market. Therefore, it would be crucial for marketers to understand elderly's purchasing behavior. The purpose of this study was to identify clothing purchasing behavior of elderly women. For this study, questionnaires were administered to 600 women over 55 years of age. However, the sample that was analyzed fer statistical analysis was involved 418 elderly women. Statistical analysis were majorly descriptives such as frequencies and percentages. The major results of this study were summarized as follows. 1. In relation to problem recognition in purchasing process, motives of purchasing apparel were identified as a happy event in home such as a wedding and a birthday, a change of seasons and a casual discovery of a suitable clothing in shopping, in orders. 2. In relation to information search, important information on apparel and fashionability were thought as display racks in a store, opinion from friends and family and fashionability from others or streets, in orders. 3. In relation to selecting a store in purchasing process, older consumers assessed that attractive price, design suited to my age, variety in one store and apparel product quality were important store attributes, in orders. In terms of a purchase place, older consumers purchased clothing mainly on department stores, wholesale stores such as Namdaemoon or Dongdaemoon market, mainly retail stores located close to home and discount stores of well known brand, in orders. 4. In relation to alternative evaluation in purchasing process, older consumeres considered that style or appearance suited to me, color, design, comfort and fitness were important selection criteria, in orders. 5. In relation to purchase choice, 61.7% of the respondents paid money by themselves and 68.9% paid on cash in purchasing apparel. 6. In relation to outcomes of purchase, older consumers solved their complaint against a unsatisfactory product mainly by returning the unsatisfactory clothing. Also, there were those who took no action against the unsatisfactory product and who altered the clothing for fitness by themselves.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.628-641
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• 2010

This study investigates the relevance among the clothing purchase motivations, selection criteria, customer satisfaction of collaborated fashion products, and conspicuous consumption by adults located in the cities of Seoul and Incheon who have experience in collaborated fashion product shopping. The results are as follows: 1. Conspicuous consumption was identified with three factors: symbol of position, pursuit of fashion brand/quality, keeping up appearance. Customers were segmented into two subdivisions of a lowly involved group with conspicuous consumption and a highly involved group with conspicuous consumption. 2. Clothing purchase motivations with collaborated fashion products were identified with two factors of esthetical value and reasonable ostentation. Selection criteria with collaborated fashion products were identified with the two factors of extrinsic attributes and intrinsic attributes. Customer satisfaction was identified with one factor. 3. Highly involved group toward conspicuous consumptionpursued more into esthetics value, reasonable ostentation and considered more into extrinsic attributes through collaborated fashion products than the lowly involved groups. Customer satisfaction of a highly involved group toward conspicuous consumption was higher than the lowly involved group. 4. The symbol of position had a positive relationship and the keeping up appearance had a negative relationship in regards to both the relevance of conspicuous consumption and the clothing purchase motivations, selection criteria, and customer satisfaction of collaborated fashion products.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.85-107
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• 2019

Online consumers browse products belonging to a particular product line or brand for purchase, or simply leave a wide range of navigation without making purchase. The research on the behavior and purchase of online consumers has been steadily progressed, and related services and applications based on behavior data of consumers have been developed in practice. In recent years, customization strategies and recommendation systems of consumers have been utilized due to the development of big data technology, and attempts are being made to optimize users' shopping experience. However, even in such an attempt, it is very unlikely that online consumers will actually be able to visit the website and switch to the purchase stage. This is because online consumers do not just visit the website to purchase products but use and browse the websites differently according to their shopping motives and purposes. Therefore, it is important to analyze various types of visits as well as visits to purchase, which is important for understanding the behaviors of online consumers. In this study, we explored the clustering analysis of session based on click stream data of e-commerce company in order to explain diversity and complexity of search behavior of online consumers and typified search behavior. For the analysis, we converted data points of more than 8 million pages units into visit units' sessions, resulting in a total of over 500,000 website visit sessions. For each visit session, 12 characteristics such as page view, duration, search diversity, and page type concentration were extracted for clustering analysis. Considering the size of the data set, we performed the analysis using the Mini-Batch K-means algorithm, which has advantages in terms of learning speed and efficiency while maintaining the clustering performance similar to that of the clustering algorithm K-means. The most optimized number of clusters was derived from four, and the differences in session unit characteristics and purchasing rates were identified for each cluster. The online consumer visits the website several times and learns about the product and decides the purchase. In order to analyze the purchasing process over several visits of the online consumer, we constructed the visiting sequence data of the consumer based on the navigation patterns in the web site derived clustering analysis. The visit sequence data includes a series of visiting sequences until one purchase is made, and the items constituting one sequence become cluster labels derived from the foregoing. We have separately established a sequence data for consumers who have made purchases and data on visits for consumers who have only explored products without making purchases during the same period of time. And then sequential pattern mining was applied to extract frequent patterns from each sequence data. The minimum support is set to 10%, and frequent patterns consist of a sequence of cluster labels. While there are common derived patterns in both sequence data, there are also frequent patterns derived only from one side of sequence data. We found that the consumers who made purchases through the comparative analysis of the extracted frequent patterns showed the visiting pattern to decide to purchase the product repeatedly while searching for the specific product. The implication of this study is that we analyze the search type of online consumers by using large - scale click stream data and analyze the patterns of them to explain the behavior of purchasing process with data-driven point. Most studies that typology of online consumers have focused on the characteristics of the type and what factors are key in distinguishing that type. In this study, we carried out an analysis to type the behavior of online consumers, and further analyzed what order the types could be organized into one another and become a series of search patterns. In addition, online retailers will be able to try to improve their purchasing conversion through marketing strategies and recommendations for various types of visit and will be able to evaluate the effect of the strategy through changes in consumers' visit patterns.