• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.247-269
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• 2007

In recent years, one of the major reasons for the fierce competition amongst firms is that they strive to increase their own market shares and customer acquisition rate in the same market with similar and apparently undifferentiated products in terms of quality and perceived benefit. Because of this change in recent marketing environment, the differentiated after-sales service and diversified promotion strategies have become more important to gain competitive advantage. Price promotion is the favorite strategy that most retailers use to achieve short-term sales increase, induce consumer's brand switch, in troduce new product into market, and so forth. However, if marketers apply or copy an identical price promotion strategy without considering the characteristic differences in product and consumer preference, it will cause serious problems because discounted price itself could make people skeptical about product quality, and the changes of perceived value might appear differently depending on other factors such as consumer involvement or brand attitude. Previous studies showed that price promotion would certainly increase sales, and the discounted price compared to regular price would enhance the consumer's perceived values. On the other hand, discounted price itself could make people depreciate or skeptical about product quality, and reduce the consumers' positivity bias because consumers might be unsure whether the current price promotion is the retailer's best price offer. Moreover, we cannot say that discounted price absolutely enhances the consumer's perceived values regardless of product category and purchase situations. That is, the factors that affect consumers' value perceptions and buying behavior are so diverse in reality that the results of studies on the same dependent variable come out differently depending on what variable was used or how experiment conditions were designed. Majority of previous researches on the effect of price-comparison advertising have used consumers' buying behavior as dependent variable. In order to figure out consumers' buying behavior theoretically, analysis of value perceptions which influence buying intentions is needed. In addition, they did not combined the independent variables such as brand loyalty and price discount rate together. For this reason, this paper tried to examine the moderating effect of brand loyalty on relationship between the different levels of discounting rate and buyers' value perception. And we provided with theoretical and managerial implications that marketers need to consider such variables as product attributes, brand loyalty, and consumer involvement at the same time, and then establish a differentiated pricing strategy case by case in order to enhance consumer's perceived values properl. Three research concepts were used in our study and each concept based on past researches was defined. The perceived acquisition value in this study was defined as the perceived net gains associated with the products or services acquired. That is, the perceived acquisition value of the product will be positively influenced by the benefits buyers believe they are getting by acquiring and using the product, and negatively influenced by the money given up to acquire the product. And the perceived transaction value was defined as the perception of psychological satisfaction or pleasure obtained from taking advantage of the financial terms of the price deal. Lastly, the brand loyalty was defined as favorable attitude towards a purchased product. Thus, a consumer loyal to a brand has an emotional attachment to the brand or firm. Repeat purchasers continue to buy the same brand even though they do not have an emotional attachment to it. We assumed that if the degree of brand loyalty is high, the perceived acquisition value and the perceived transaction value will increase when higher discount rate is provided. But we found that there are no significant differences in values between two different discount rates as a result of empirical analysis. It means that price reduction did not affect consumer's brand choice significantly because the perceived sacrifice decreased only a little, and customers are satisfied with product's benefits when brand loyalty is high. From the result, we confirmed that consumers with high degree of brand loyalty to a specific product are less sensitive to price change. Thus, using price promotion strategy to merely expect sale increase is not recommendable. Instead of discounting price, marketers need to strengthen consumers' brand loyalty and maintain the skimming strategy. On the contrary, when the degree of brand loyalty is low, the perceived acquisition value and the perceived transaction value decreased significantly when higher discount rate is provided. Generally brands that are considered inferior might be able to draw attention away from the quality of the product by making consumers focus more on the sacrifice component of price. But considering the fact that consumers with low degree of brand loyalty are known to be unsatisfied with product's benefits and have relatively negative brand attitude, bigger price reduction offered in experiment condition of this paper made consumers depreciate product's quality and benefit more and more, and consumer's psychological perceived sacrifice increased while perceived values decreased accordingly. We infer that, in the case of inferior brand, a drastic price-cut or frequent price promotion may increase consumers' uncertainty about overall components of product. Therefore, it appears that reinforcing the augmented product such as after-sale service, delivery and giving credit which is one of the levels consisting of product would be more effective in reality. This will be better rather than competing with product that holds high brand loyalty by reducing sale price. Although this study tried to examine the moderating effect of brand loyalty on relationship between the different levels of discounting rate and buyers' value perception, there are several limitations. This study was conducted in controlled conditions where the high involvement product and two different levels of discount rate were applied. Given the presence of low involvement product, when both pieces of information are available, it is likely that the results we have reported here may have been different. Thus, this research results explain only the specific situation. Second, the sample selected in this study was university students in their twenties, so we cannot say that the results are firmly effective to all generations. Future research that manipulates the level of discount along with the consumer involvement might lead to a more robust understanding of the effects various discount rate. And, we used a cellular phone as a product stimulus, so it would be very interesting to analyze the result when the product stimulus is an intangible product such as service. It could be also valuable to analyze whether the change of perceived value affects consumers' final buying behavior positively or negatively.

• Journal of Agricultural Extension & Community Development
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.205-227
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• 1995

The objectives of this study were to 1) classify the cooperative farmers' organizations in Korea according to the development level and institutional aspects through the exploration of its' conceptual and institutional basis, 2) analyze the farmers' needs for organization, 3) identify the problems and situation of organizations, and 4) formulate an effective management model for each cooperative farmers' organization. The study was carried out through a review of literature and using available statistical data collected from various sources and empirical survey. Major findings of the study were: 1) the cooperative farmers' organizations could be classified into four types : crop units, farming cooperative corporation, trust farming companies and joint-stock agri-business. 2) a lot of members of the organization feel that the information is insufficient, the opportunity to suggest their own ideas is hardly given, and the members are not satisfied with the cooperation among the members, 3) the members who have higher level of schooling education showed a higher participation level in the organization, 4) most of members did not recognize the organization they participated in, 5) participation of the organization's members and concerned institutions is an important factor to promote problem solving and better communication within the organization, 6) any type of continuing education for the members is needed to facilitate the transfer of a new agricultural and organizational technology, 7) research and development(R & D) is one of the most important factors of the development of organizations, 8) most organizations are deficient in professional management skills(financial, personal, accounts, etc.), 9) the trust farming companies have difficulties in managing the firm on account of the characteristics of agriculture(especially seasonal), the dispersed trust lands, and the need for more alternative work in the winter season, and 10) in the case of agri-businesses, their organizations are more specialized in marketing and have more structured systems of management. Based on the results of the study the following recommendations were made for further improvement and development of agricultural cooperative organizations : (1) More governmental support should be given to education for improvement of the organizational structure. And more deliberate and differentiated governmental support should be provided for the organizations to be viably managed. (2) For more efficient communication between the members and the organization, more opportunities for discussion are needed. (3) The more research should be committed to this kind of work in order to get more analytic data and strategic plans of cooperative organizations.

• Korean Journal of Poultry Science
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.107-114
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• 1993

The structure change in the broiler industry of Korea has been taking place very rapidly toward the direction of integrated production and marketing system. During the course of the evolution into the integrated structure, however, a number of small business entities, uncountable nationally but a minimum of a dozen, that previously engaged in the supply of production factors or live bird transaction also tended to get involved in the new system as a disguised or pseudo-integrator, having brought a lot of problems not only to the farmers but also to the development of integrated structure. The pseudo-integrator is generally characterized by limited functions in such a way of supplying chicks and feeds to and collecting grown birds from farmers under the contract at a fixed farmer's payment in practically the same pattern as a partial or quasi-integration, which intends to act as if an integrator in a stratagem to simply enjoy a margin simply from selling supplies and buying products for a certain period of time. The grower making a contract with appears to be a farmer who used to be an Independent and speculating but not able to join in the normal system of evolving integration. The problems of a pseudo-integrator center on the financial loss to a contract farmer, because the falsified integrator has to become easily bankrupt and run away when the price of live broiler continually stays below the cost of production, even though he is able to make a tremendous profit otherwise which is the real purpose of the operation for. It is true that the volatile market, fluctuating the price up more than doubled in a month and down to a half in a few weeks, makes the pseudo-integrator find the room for such a fraudulence. In addition, its activity also adversely affect the evolution of the integration due to rather negative image on structure change in general. It is recommended that the farmers need to better understand the real picture of the integrated system so as not to be swindled by a disguised, small scale agribusiness agent. By the same token, it is also equally required to have the whole industry integrated completely as early as possible. The Joint effort to get rid of pseudo-integrators' problems shall be put for the industry development moving toward the integration. No doubt a pseudo-integrator must be a temporary player for chance emerging during the course of structure change into the integrated, though.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.283-296
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• 2012

The goal of this study is to determine the social emotion model as an emotion sharing relationship and information sharing relationship based on the user's relations at social networking services. 26 social emotions were extracted by verification of compliance among 92 different emotions collected from the literature survey. The survey on the 26 emotion words was verified to the similarity of social relation types to the Likert 7-points scale. The principal component analysis of the survey data determined 12 representative social emotions in the emotion sharing relation and 13 representative social emotions in the information sharing relation. Multidimensional scaling developed the two-dimensional social emotion model of emotion sharing relation and of information sharing relation based on online communication environment. Meanwhile, insignificant factors in the suggest social emotion models were removed by the structural equation modeling analysis, statistically. The test result of validity analysis demonstrated the fitness of social emotion models at emotion sharing relationships (CFI: .887, TLI: .885, RMSEA: .094), social emotion model of information sharing relationships (CFI: .917, TLI: .900, RMSEA : 0.050). In conclusion, this study presents two different social emotion models based on two different relation types. The findings of this study will provide not only a reference of evaluating social emotions in designing social networking services but also a direction of improving social emotions.

• Journal of Korean Society for Geospatial Information Science
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.175-181
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• 2014

Korean government proposed a new initiative 'government 3.0' with which the administration will open its dataset to the public before requests. City of Seoul is the front runner in disclosure of government data. If we know what kind of attributes are governing factors for any given segmentation, these outcomes can be applied to real world problems of marketing and business strategy, and administrative decision makings. However, with respect to city of Seoul, selection of optimal variables from the open dataset up to several thousands of attributes would require a humongous amount of computation time because it might require a combinatorial optimization while maximizing dissimilarity measures between clusters. In this study, we acquired 718 attribute dataset from Statistics Korea and conducted an analysis to select the most suitable variables, which differentiate Gangnam from other districts, using the Genetic algorithm and Dunn's index. Also, we utilized the Microsoft Azure cloud computing system to speed up the process time. As the result, the optimal 28 variables were finally selected, and the validation result showed that those 28 variables effectively group the Gangnam from other districts using the Ward's minimum variance and K-means algorithm.

• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.895-911
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• 2012

The purpose of this study was to examine consumers' perceptions of eco-friendly children's-wear and their impact on the selection criteria for children's-wear and stores. A descriptive survey method using a self-administered questionnaire was employed. The sample consisted of mothers with children under the age of 13 residing in Seoul and the Gyeonggi area. Data were collected from September 2011 to October, 2011. The collected data were analyzed to find the differences between purchasers and non-purchasers of eco-friendly children's-wear in terms of their perceptions of eco-friendly children's-wear, as well as the influence of these perceptions on the consideration degree of criteria for the selection of children's wear and store. The results indicate that perceptions of eco-friendly children's-wear implied five key factors related to quality reliability, expected value, style, degree of recognition, and dissatisfaction with design and price. The results also revealed some differences between the group purchasing eco-friendly children's-wear and the group not purchasing eco-friendly children's-wear. These different perceptions were related to the aspects of quality reliability, expected value, style, degree of recognition. In general, the non-purchasing group displayed a lower mean score than the purchasing group. Both groups showed a low interest in aesthetic appreciation and the degree of recognition factor. The results showed that consumer's perceptions of eco-friendly children's-wear had an influence on the criteria for the selection of children's-wear and store type in both groups. Considering the findings of the study, it is clear that both purchasers and non-purchasers of eco-friendly children's-wear showed differences in their perceptions and purchasing behavior. Therefore, marketing strategies to appeal to the non-purchasing group should be differentiated from strategies used to ensure the loyalty of the purchasing group.

• Korean Business Review
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• v.17
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• pp.83-110
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• 2004

In modern society, there exists a growing tendency that the product image, rather than the substance of the product, is given more and more emphasis. In other words, consumers tend to purchase a product whose brand image coincides with their self image. Today, it is one of the essential factors for marketing strategy of a modern enterprise to have brand image perceived by consumer self-image. The image, by affecting the perception of consumers, explains the reason why some consumers choose one brand out of many brands that are available to them. Furthermore, brand-image perceived by consumers becomes more important factor in improving the company's market share. For this research, we investigated the theoretical background based on previous studies and collected statistical data through a market survey. The results of the actual research indicate that the attributes of the images differ notably depending upon demographic attributes; that the brand image judged by a customer is positively correlated to the customer's self image; and that the regression analysis of the purchase intention in accordance with coincidence of independent variables proved to be insignificant. But the correlation analysis of the variables shows that the sensuous image of a perceived brand image product notable differences in the purchase intention. Most of Consumers tend to prefer certain brand of causal wears in accordance with their cognized brand-image and self-image: social self-image and actual self-image. Corporate must not spare any effort to establish differential advantage. through better image or changing image. Also marketers have to identify the strengths and weakness of their brand in relation to the competition in setting up their brand management strategy. In conclusion, the outcomes of the study suggest that the consumers purchase the images of the brands, rather than the products themselves. Accordingly, in the clothes markets with similar quality levels, the emphasis should be put on differentiation of the brand images in order to further increase sales and maximize profits.

• Journal of Korea Society of Industrial Information Systems
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.101-111
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• 2017

This Research is to Find how the CSR Activities for the Growth of Stable and Sustainable Family Business do Influence the Improvement of Company's Brand Image and Service Purchase Intention. It is Aimed for Finding how the Image of Company Pursuing the Diverse CSR Activities is Recognized by General Consumers and the Correlation between the Improvement of Company's Image and the Product & Service Purchase Intention. 323 Exemplars were Distributed to the University Students in Seoul Metropolitan and Chungcheong Area, and 314 Finally were Used for the Analysis. It was Investigated the Demographical Factors, the Important Fields among Company's CSR Activities, the Reason for Company's CSR Activities, the Preferred Companies among Sponsoring Companies. It was Analyzed Three Items of Company Image such as Product/Service, Potential Competence, Relation to Public Benefit and the Regression Model was Investigated how these Three Items do Influence the Purchase Intention. The Research Results Show 'the Improvement of Social Awareness for Company' and 'Negative Awareness Change for Company' as the Reason for CSR. Consumers have the Preference to the Companies Actively Sponsoring Culture & Arts, and this Generally Affects the Business Results, and thus, it is Considered that the Companies have to Contribute the Local Society with the Sprit of Corporate Citizenship in Accordance with the Consumers needs, and Actively to Extend the Culture & Arts Sponsorship.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.23-32
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• 2017

Although previous studies have emphasized factors affecting people's variety-seeking behavior, research has not been performed to examine the interaction effect of good-bad luck and embodied cognition (hand washing) on variety-seeking behavior. Experience of good and bad luck affects consumer information processing and hand washing is known to reverse the experience of luck. Understanding the interaction effect of good/bad luck and hand washing on variety seeking behavior will shed important light on consumer behavior including choice and product purchase. To do this, a study was performed to investigate the effects of good/bad luck priming and hand washing on variety seeking behavior. Participants were primed with good or bad luck and then were asked to either wash their hands or not. After that, they were led to choose yogurt for the next seven days and the dependent measure was the number of different tastes of yogurt participants picked up. An interaction effect of luck priming and hand washing was found. Results indicate that, in good luck condition, there was no difference in variety seeking behavior between hand washing participants and non-hand washing participants. However, in bad luck condition, hand washing participants chose less diverse tastes of yogurt than non-hand washing participants. Implications of the study findings for the field of consumer psychology and marketing are discussed.

• Culinary science and hospitality research
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.114-127
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• 2016

The study, focused on social commerce food service consumers, attempted to test the relationship between perceived risk and price consciousness, and suggested that perceived risk and price consciousness, the the degree to which price is considered when purchasing goods, affect reuse intention. Through such test results, the study aimed to provide useful practical implications for establishing marketing strategies of companies related to food service social commerce, and those looking into behavioral intentions of social commerce using food service consumers. The subjects of the study were male and female residents of Korea over 2-years of age who have had some experience purchasing a dining out item through social commerce. The social commerce company selected for sampling was Coupang, which was the number 1 shopping App in 2014 based on the number of yearly visitors. A questionnaire-based survey was conducted on respondents who had indicated that they had experience purchasing foodservice goods through Coupang. The results revealed that source risk, privacy risk, psychological risk, and time-loss risk had negative influences on reuse intention. However, social risk and financial risk did not exhibit any influences. Price consciousness had positive influences on reuse intention. The study explored perceived risk and price consciousness as elements to affect continuous use of social commerce of foodservice consumers.