• Fashion, Industry and Education
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.35-46
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• 2016

The purpose of this study was to examine female consumers' attitudes and purchase intentions toward intimate apparel brands. To understand female consumers' shopping behaviors for intimate apparel products, this study examined interrelationships among brand familiarity, perceived risk, attitudes, and purchase intentions toward intimate apparel brands. A conceptual model was developed by adopting perceived risk theory (Cox, 1967) and theory of reasoned action (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980). A pre-survey using a paper and pencil was conducted to identify the most familiar intimate apparel brand to young female consumers. The majority of pre-survey respondents (66 female college students) indicated Victoria's Secret as the most prominent intimate apparel brand. Therefore, Victoria's Secret was used to examine possible effects of brand familiarity on perceived risk and attitudinal and behavioral responses toward the brand. Using a web-based survey, 384 complete responses were collected from young female college students between the ages of 18-29 at a Mid-southern U.S. university. A structural equation modeling was employed to test the proposed research model and hypotheses. Results showed positive, statistically significant associations among the four variables (e.g., brand familiarity, perceived risk, attitudes, and purchase intentions). The findings suggested that young female consumers who are familiar with a particular intimate apparel brand are likely to perceive a low level of risk, leading to positive, strong attitudes with purchase intentions toward that particular intimate apparel brand. This suggests establishing brand familiarity through integrated marketing communication is crucial for risk reduction strategy in intimate apparel shopping.

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.90-103
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• 2024

The advancement of information and communication technologies has led to the rise of social media, giving rise to a new type of celebrity known as the "social media influencer". Social media influencers exert their influence not only by promoting products for various companies and brands but also by launching their own businesses. In other words, influencers leverage their credibility to create value in multiple markets as human brands, based on their unique characteristics and diverse images. Nowadays, social media influencers have become a type of human brand, supported by followers who enthusiastically engage in the influencers' businesses, a phenomenon also known as social shopping. Based on the human brand theory and doppelgänger effects, this study aims to investigate the impact of influencers' credibility, specifically their expertise, trustworthiness, and attractiveness on consumers' social shopping behaviors. Additionally, it examines the influence of consumers' desire to imitate influencers on their social shopping behaviors. A survey conducted with 300 female social media users revealed that trustworthiness and attractiveness significantly influenced imitation intentions and social shopping behaviors, while expertise did not show significant effects. Furthermore, imitation intentions had a significant impact on social shopping behaviors. These findings suggest that the attributes consumers perceive in influencers as human brands evoke a desire to imitate them, ultimately leading to social shopping behaviors.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.47 no.4
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• pp.760-777
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• 2023

Fashion brands seek guidelines for effective green advertising messages, considering benefit appeals, brand types, and construal level. However, few studies have explored their simultaneous interplay. Thus, the present study conducted an experiment with a 2X2X2 between-subjects design to investigate how brand type and construal level moderate the mediating role of ad-brand congruency between benefit appeals and purchase intention. A total of 245 Millennials and Generation Z participants completed an online survey, and the data were analyzed using SPSS. A significant three-way interaction was revealed. Low-construal-level messages with concrete content showed disparities between aspirational and accessible brands concerning other-benefit appeals: Accessible brands utilizing other-benefit appeals demonstrated higher ad-brand congruency, while aspirational brands had lower ad-brand congruency. Furthermore, within aspirational brands, self-benefit appeals resulted in higher ad-brand congruency than other-benefit appeals. Finally, a moderated mediating effect was discovered, indicating that brand types and construal level moderated the mediating effect of ad-brand congruency between benefit appeals and purchase intention. The mediating effect was prominent in the context of self-benefit appeals, aspirational brands, and low-construal-level messages. This study highlights the intricate dynamics of the three factors in green advertising, providing valuable insights for crafting more targeted green advertisements.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.97-115
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• 2010

The concept that human and brand can related to each other is referred to as 'brand relationship' or 'consumer-brand relationship. By arguing that the concept of brand relationship is a readily understandable analogue, it appears that relationship thinking in the context of consumers and brands sometimes is taken for granted without thoroughly discussing its applicability. In this perspective, this paper tests the limitations with the relationship metaphor and interpersonal relationship theory by comparing the differences among product categories. And research findings as follow like these. First, even if many companies seek to anthropomorphize their brands, consumers may still don't consider them as human. Second, the possibility of personification is much higher in product categories like lead higher interaction between consumers and brands and give higher enjoyment than those of lower. And finally, consumer's personification of products are not essential factors that lead higher brand relationship.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.187-209
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• 2017

Service industry performance and competitive advantage depend on the attitudes and behavior of customer service employees who produce and deliver services through contact with customers. Most studies on customer service employees so far have concentrated on kindness, attitudes, or benefits. This study focuses on the increasing importance of customer service employees and intends to study them from the viewpoint of human brands that recognize customer service employees as a brand. In addition to the role of the employee at the service contact point, the customer participation behavior affects the interaction process with the customer service employee. Ultimately, customers could no longer be excluded from control to improve service quality. This study based on theory that the human brand characteristics of the customer service employees lead the customer's participation, which has a positive effect on the relationship with the service brand and the service brand attitude surveyed and analyzed customers who use service brand. This study is summarized as follows. First, the relationship between the service brand and the customer is examined. Second, this study also expands prior studies by examining the human brand characteristics of customer service employees and customers' willingness to participate in providing information on the impact of the consumer-brand relationship. The results of the study indicate that among the customer service employees' human brand characteristics reliability, familiarity, and empathy were found to affect the relationship between customers, the service brand, and the attitude toward the service brand the most. This study provides important implications for theoretical and practical strategies by examining the qualities and characteristics of customer service employees, which are the most important agents of marketing.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.515-529
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• 2014

This study examines the effects of self-presentation and aesthetics on purchase intentions toward a brand-new smartphone through a research model that accounts for these intentions in a more comprehensive manner than traditional ICT frameworks. The constructs were selected based on the three-level processing theory: aesthetics at the visceral level, perceived usefulness and playfulness at the behavioural level, and self-presentation at the reflective level. The hypotheses were developed from self-presentation theory and the attractiveness stereotype which is one of theories in human-computer interactions (HCI). For the validation of hypotheses, the research model was empirically tested for the purchase intention of Apple's iPhone5 by university students in Korea.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.45 no.1
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• pp.73-93
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• 2021

This study typifies fashion mobile plays in a digital environment and explores the experiential value created by them through a case study of a fashion brand mobile app. For the case analysis, mobile plays were divided into four types: intrinsic motivation/active participation, intrinsic motivation/passive participation, external motivation/active participation, and external motivation/passive participation, depending on the mobile players motivation and level of participation. Among the global fashion brand mobile apps released from 2009 to 2019, 16 cases suitable for the analytical framework were used for final analyses. The main results are as follows. First, mobile play value include characteristics such as networkability, immersion, hyper-spatiality, and super-temporality in addition to the attributes of a traditional play such as spontaneity, uncertainty, regularity, and playfulness. Second, the four types of mobile play provide participants with an experiential value such as creative value, emotional value, social value, and exploitative value. This study has academic implications in terms of introducing a new framework that can typify mobile plays and suggest practical implications for what experiential value fashion companies can give consumers through mobile app marketing.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.705-715
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• 2020

The domestic fashion industry of the middle and late 20th century emphasized the importance of a standardized design process; however, the values of differentiated brand individuality have become increasingly important with the qualitative·quantitative growth of designer brands. Therefore, paying attention to designer individuality (or a differentiated element of a designer brand growing up in the domestic fashion industry) this study reestablished factors of the designer brand individuality. An in-depth interview was conducted with 13 designers and consumers for empirical analysis. In order to identify concepts of designer individuality based on the theory of the brand personality by Aaker along with precedent studies, the study devised a theoretical frame to explain a conceptual structure of designer brand individuality as well as reestablish its factors as the designer individuality, design and non-design factors through empirical research. Empirical research derived the designer individuality factors as an external designer image, designer taste, design philosophy and designer personality. Design factors were derived as concept, working process and method, style and formativeness. Non-design factors were also extracted as wearing experience, wearer image, lookbook image, fashion shows and exhibitions. It is meaningful that little empirical research has been conducted on domestic fashion designers who actually run designer brands and that this study helped understand designer brands through a new approach called designer individuality.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.1-21
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• 2007

This study seeks to understand the effects of information search activities and brand image on the hotel patronage intention based on the theory of reasoned action. First, it investigates the influence of attitude formed about hotel on the patronage intention. Second, it seeks to develope an alternative to TRA by looking into the effects of hotel image variable on hotel-specific attitude and patronage intention and attempts to substantiate the role of brand image as a substitute to subjective norm to increase the TRA's explanatory power. The main finding of this study are as follow; First, out of the three components of cognitive evaluation of hotel (human service, physical service and information service), human and physicial services were found to have significant influence on patronage intention. Brand image was found to exert notable influence on attitude toward hotel as well as patronage intention. Remarkably, the finding that brand image positively enhanced the TRA model sheds new strategic insight as to the usefulness of brand image as an alternative to overcome the TRA's limitation stemming from subjective norm. Third, it was learned that study subjects gave more weight to external information sources such as TV, radio, newspaper, magazine, and internet than to internal sources such as individual knowledge, experience or self image.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.43-57
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• 2020

Purpose: Along with the trend increasing dining-out and enjoying variety of menu, dessert café has been introduced as a new type of food service provider and grown up rapidly. We need to verify structural relationship that dessert café environment influences overall quality and brand image and loyalty. Research design, data, and methodology: This study seeks to understand how in-café environment influence overall quality, brand image and loyalty directly and indirectly based on SOR theory. We examine detail effect of in-café environment on overall quality and brand image and subsequently loyalty. Sample data were collected from 563 online survey panels and analyzed by using SmartPLS 3.2.9. Result: The results indicates that all sub-dimensions of in-café environment influences positively overall quality. While, menu and atmosphere make positive impact on brand image. price, food and beverage quality, employee service do not affect significantly brand image. Further, overall quality influences positively brand image and both overall quality and brand image affect positively loyalty. In addition, overall quality plays full mediator role in relationship among price, food and beverage quality, employee service and brand image. Conclusions: Dessert café should differentiate itself from competitors through physical and non-physical environments which are likely to influence overall quality. As overall quality mediates between environment and brand image and influences loyalty, dessert café is required to communicate strength of functional quality and service quality aggressively. Additionally, favorable brand image affecting loyalty is required to be dominated in advance as the market is likely to be segmented along with its growth.