• Human Ecology Research
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• v.56 no.2
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• pp.167-174
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• 2018

This study investigated consumer innovativeness by examining a relationship model of innate innovativeness, product interest, product-specific innovativenss, and actualized innovativeness for eight product items as well as observed gender differences in the variables. The eight product items for the survey were smartphones, movies, clothing, cars, skin care products/cosmetics, traveling, AI products, and books. An online survey was conducted in January 2018, and 400 responses from male and female consumers in their twenties and thirties, were analyzed using reliability test, descriptive statistics, regression, and ANCOVA. The positive effect of innate innovativeness and product interest on product-specific innovativeness, and positive effect of innate innovativeness and product-specific innovativeness on actualized innovativeness were confirmed. Product interest was found to have a stronger power on product-specific innovativeness than innate innovativeness. Gender differences in product interest, product-specific innovativeness, and actualized innovativeness were identified as hypothesized. Female consumer's clothing interest, clothing innovativenss, and actualized clothing innovativeness were higher than male consumers; in addition, male consumer's cars and AI interest, cars and AI innovativenss, and actualized cars and AI innovativeness were higher than female's. The controversial results that indicated the higher innate innovativeness of male consumers useful to further in-depth discussion and research. This study contributed to the theory construction of consumer innovativeness research areas and offered practical implications for new product launching and customer relationship management.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.1275-1286
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• 2021

The purpose of this study is to employ the theory of consumption value and consumers' innovative personality characteristics to explain the adoption of new personal electronics devices in Vietnamese market. This study adapts a quantitative survey-based approach to test hypotheses about relationship between consumption value, product specific innovativeness and new product adoption. The study uses a quantitative data set of 915 consumers who owned one mobile electronic device at least in Ho Chi Minh city, one of the biggest cities of Vietnam. The data was collected through personal interview and convenient sampling method. The conceptual model was tested using PLS structural equation model. The findings of this study suggest that both consumption value and product specific innovativeness influence the adoption of new electronic products. The results also reveal that product specific innovativeness mediates the relationship between consumption value and new product adoption. The study further identified that consumption value was taken as a second-order multidimensions construct with five components, namely functional value, epistemic value, economic value, social value and emotional value. As a result, the research suggests some implications to enhance marketers' capabilities to develop strategies for launching new hi-tech products in an emerging market as Vietnam.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.31-52
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• 2013

The metacognitive experience of the ease or difficulty with which new, external information can be processed, referred to as 'processing fluency,' has been shown to influence a wide range of human judgments including truth judgments, familiarity judgments, risk perception, evaluation, and preference (see Alter and Oppenheimer 2009 for a review). The current research explores the possibility of a consumer's product innovativeness judgment based on the difficulty of processing new information. In specific, this study examines if the inferential link between (dis)fluency-(un)familiarity can feed into the perception of innovativeness. This study also explores how a consumer's processing motivation can moderate the consumer's reliance on processing fluency in judgments and how the influence of fluency can vary depending on judgment task orders. In an experiment, participants rated a new product's innovativeness and then indicated their product attitude (or vice versa depending on the judgment task order condition) after reading a product review article that was printed in either an easy-to-read or a difficult-to-read font (for fluency manipulation). The findings show that low need for cognition individuals infer higher product innovativeness when processing product information is difficult rather than easy, consistent with the common assumption that 'new information is more difficult to process than familiar information.' The findings also suggest that once low fluency is attributed to innovativeness, it may no longer lead to a negative response to the product. High need for cognition individuals' judgments on product innovativeness are not affected by fluency. The findings also demonstrate a judgment task order effect on the use of fluency in judgments (e.g., Xu and Schwarz 2005). This study provides the first evidence that an individual's fluency experience can be used as a source of information in product innovativeness judgments especially under low processing motivation conditions. The findings can help marketers better understand the malleability of consumer judgments and perceptions of product characteristics (e.g., product innovativeness) by demonstrating an interesting interplay of processing fluency, processing motivation, and judgment task-related contextual factors.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.59-75
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• 2020

In this paper, we investigate the influence of factors on the firm, industry, and country levels on the new product development performance (NPD) of manufacturing firms in advanced economies. The resource-based view, industrial organization theory and institutional theory have established that firm-, industry- and country-level factors are all relevant for the NPD of firms. However, little is known about the relative importance of factors at the three different levels across countries, as prior studies on firms' NPD have focused on specific countries and levels of analysis. Our analysis of survey data from 1,437 manufacturing firms in nine advanced OECD countries shows that while firm-level factors are generally better predictors of firms' innovativeness than either industry- or country-level factors, the results strongly differ across countries, indicating that the relative importance of antecedents of innovativeness is country-specific rather than universal.

• Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.223-234
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• 1996

This paper intends to examine the relationship between the consumer's enduring involvement toward clothing product, fashion innovativeness, and fashion opinion leadership. Specific purposes of the study are: 1) to identify dimensions of the enduring involvement toward clothing based on the theoretical framework; 2) to find out the effects of clothing involvement on fashion innovativeness and fashion innovativeness,m fashion opinion leadership, and demographic variables. The Likert Type questionnaires were used to measure clothing involvement, fashion innovativeness, and fashion opinion leadership. Samples of 389 women(college students, career women, housewives) living in Taegu area were analyzed by factor analysis, Pearson's correlations, t-test, and multiple regression analysis. Main results of the study are as follows: 1) Concept of the enduring involvement toward clothing is composed of five dimensions: fashion, importance, pleasure, self-expression, and perceived buying risk. 2) The clothing involvement is found to have significant influences on fashion innovativeness and fashion opinion leadership. 3) The relationships between the clothing involvement, age, educational level, and marital status are found to be statistically significant.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.145-157
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• 2017

SMEs play an important role in the domestic economy. Regarding competency to respond flexibly to unpredictable changes, agility of SMEs is more emphasized. Entrepreneurship orientation is an important factor in the source of SMEs that enable such competency. Entrepreneurial orientation refers to the tendency of a CEO or a member of a corporation to be innovative, risk-taking, and active in the face of various market opportunities. In other words, it refers to the tendency to be expressed in the activities of the entire company without regard to specific technologies or industries. Entrepreneurial orientation has a direct or indirect effect on business performance. Therefore, in this study, we conducted theoretical and empirical studies on the effect of entrepreneurial orientation of SME managers on business performance. Research hypotheses were derived through theoretical research. We focused on the mediating effect of innovation activity and tried to identify the mechanism that entrepreneurial orientation leads to business performance through product innovation and service innovation activity. We investigated whether innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk-taking, which are sub-variables of entrepreneurial orientation, affect business performance through product innovation and service innovation. We conducted a survey of SMEs in Busan and Kyungnam regions to examine the research hypotheses. The results show that product innovation and service innovation have mediating effects. The results of the study are as follows. Product innovation has mediating effect of innovativeness and risk-taking on business performance. Service innovation has been found to mediate innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk-taking on business performance. There was a difference in the mediation effect between the two innovations. Product innovation showed a low mediating effect and a large direct effect. On the other hands, service innovation is relatively more mediating than product innovation. The implications of the research results are derived in relation to the essential differences between product innovation and service innovation. Limitations of the study and directions for future research are presented.

• Korea Science and Art Forum
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• v.30
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• pp.217-230
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to develop a theoretical model identifying how consumers accept a fashionable technology product. A systematic review of 39 influential TAM studies focusing on theory development in the context of information technology results in three tendencies, which become backbone of the model of fashionable technology acceptance. A subsequent review of the nature of fashion fleshes out the backbone with detailed propositions in the more specific context of fashionable technology. The model of fashionable technology acceptance includes key propositions of Theory of Reasoned Action, in which internal beliefs consist of functional, aesthetic and symbolic values, and other factors, such as technology features (i.e., hardware specification, software specification, brand, and price factors), environmental conditions (i.e., technical infrastructure and user occasion), individual differences (i.e., age, gender, experience, personality, aesthetic sense, fashion innovativeness, and income), and social influence (i.e., subjective norms, social reputation, and cultural difference). Implications, limitations, and suggestions for future research are also discussed.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.141-177
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• 2011

I. Research Objectives: Most of the previous studies on diffusion have concentrated on efficacy of WOM communication with the use of variables at individual level (Iacobucci 1996; Midgley et al. 1992). However, there is a paucity of studies which investigated network's structural properties as antecedents of WOM from the perspective of consumers' sociocultural propensities. Against this research backbone, this study attempted to link the network's structural properties and consumer' WOM behavior on cross-national basis. The major research objective of this study was to examine the relationship between network properties and WOM by comparing Korean and Chinese consumers. Specific objectives of this research are threefold; firstly, it sought to examine whether network properties (i.e., tie strength, centrality, range) affect WOM (WOM intention and quality of WOM). Secondly, it aimed to explore the moderating effects of cutural orientation (uncertainty avoidance and individuality) on the relationship between network properties and WOM. Thirdly, it substantiates the role of innovativeness as antecedents to both network properties and WOM. II. Research Hypotheses: Based on the above research objectives, the study put forth the following research hypotheses to validate. ${\cdot}$ H 1-1 : The Strength of tie between two counterparts within network will positively influence WOM effectivenes ${\cdot}$ H 1-2 : The network centrality will positively influence the WOM effectiveness ${\cdot}$ H 1-3 : The network range will positively influence the WOM effectiveness ${\cdot}$ H 2-1 : The consumer's uncertainty avoidance tendency will moderate the relationship between network properties and WOM effectiveness ${\cdot}$ H 2-2 : The consumer's individualism tendency will moderate the relationship between network properties and WOM effectiveness ${\cdot}$ H 3-1 : The consumer's innovativeness will positively influence the social network properties ${\cdot}$ H 3-2 : The consumer's innovativeness will positively influence WOM effectiveness III. Methodology: Through a pilot study and back-translation, two versions of questionnaire were prepared, one in Korean and the other in Chinese. The chinese data were collected from the chinese students enrolled in language schools in Suwon city in Korea, while Korean data were collected from students taking classes in a major university in Seoul. A total of 277 questionnaire were used for analysis of Korean data and 212 for Chinese data. The reason why Chinese students living in Korea rather than in China were selected was based on two factors: one was to neutralize the differences (ie, retail channel availability) that may arise from living in separate countries and the second was to minimize the difference in communication venues such as internet accessibility and cell phone usability. SPSS 12.0 and AMOS 7.0 were used for analysis. IV. Results: Prior to hypothesis verification, mean differences between the two countries in terms of major constructs were performed with the following result; As for network properties (tie strength, centrality and range), Koreans showed higher scores in all three constructs. For cultural orientation traits, Koreans scored higher only on uncertainty avoidance trait than Chinese. As a result of verifying the first research objective, confirming the relationship between network properties and WOM effectiveness, on Korean side, tie strength(Beta=.116; t=1.785) and centrality (Beta=.499; t=6.776) significantly influenced on WOM intention, and similar finding was obtained for Chinese side, with tie strength (Beta=.246; t=3.544) and centrality (Beta=.247; t=3.538) being significant. However, with regard to WOM argument quality, Korean data yielded only centrality (Beta=.82; t=7.600) having a significant impact on WOM, whereas China showed both tie strength(Beat=.142; t=2.052) and centrality(Beta=.348; t=5.031) being influential. To answer for the second research objective addressing the moderating role of cultural orientation, moderated regression anaylsis was performed and the result showed that uncertainty avoidance moderated between network range and WOM intention for both Korea and China, But for Korea, the uncertainty avoidance moderated between tie strength and WOM quality, while for China it moderated between network range and WOM intention. And innovativeness moderated between tie strength and WOM intention for Korea but it moderated between network range and WOM intention for China. As a result of analysing for third research objective, we found that for Korea, innovativeness positively influenced centrality only (Beta=.546; t=10.808), while for China it influenced both tie strength (Beta=.203; t=2.998) and centrality(Beta=.518; t=8.782). But for both countries alike, the innovativeness influenced positively on WOM (WOM intention and WOM quality). V. Implications: The study yields the two practical implications. Firstly, the result suggests that companies targeting multinational customers need to identify segments which are susceptible to the positive WOM and WOM information based on individual traits such as uncertainty avoidance and individualism and based on that, develop marketing communication strategy. Secondly, the companies need to divide the market on Roger's five innovation stages and based on this information, enforce marketing strategy which utilizes social networking tools such as public media and WOM. For instance, innovator and early adopters, if provided with new product information, will be able to capitalize upon the network advantages and thus add informational value to network operations using SNS or corporate blog.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.93-101
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• 2020

Purpose: While crowdfunding functions as a purchasing behavior, it is different from other purchasing behavior. It derives from non-existed idea and leads to production and purchase through continuous idea development with participants and participants' support is a proxy for future sales. This study researches on consumption value, customer's trust and consumer's innovativeness to reveal which constructs of consumption value and customer's trust should be considered. Research design, data, and methodology: Crowdfunding participation intentions were examined using consumer's consumption value and trust of platforms as independent variables, and consumer innovation as a control variable. A total of 175 surveys were used for analysis. The hypothesis was tested using hierarchical regression analysis. Results: The results showed economic, epistemic value and ability, benevolence consumer trust to have a significant effect in crowdfunding participation intentions. The moderating effect of innovation was shown to be significant in only economic value and benevolence. Conclusions: The economic and hedonic value of consumers should be emphasized, as well as the evaluation level of the project itself. Moreover, technology or system safety, competency, and product specific information, as well as user benefits for their ideas are core elements in attracting new participants.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.59-88
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• 2008

Digital Convergence means integration between industry, technology, and contents, and in marketing, it usually comes with creation of new types of product and service under the base of digital technology as digitalization progress in electro-communication industries including telecommunication, home appliance, and computer industries. One can see digital convergence not only in instruments such as PC, AV appliances, cellular phone, but also in contents, network, service that are required in production, modification, distribution, re-production of information. Convergence in contents started around 1990. Convergence in network and service begins as broadcasting and telecommunication integrates and DMB(digital multimedia broadcasting), born in May, 2005 is the symbolic icon in this trend. There are some positive and negative expectations about DMB. The reason why two opposite expectations exist is that DMB does not come out from customer's need but from technology development. Therefore, customers might have hard time to interpret the real meaning of DMB. Time is quite critical to a high tech product, like DMB because another product with same function from different technology can replace the existing product within short period of time. If DMB does not positioning well to customer's mind quickly, another products like Wibro, IPTV, or HSPDA could replace it before it even spreads out. Therefore, positioning strategy is critical for success of DMB product. To make correct positioning strategy, one needs to understand how consumer interprets DMB and how consumer's interpretation can be changed via communication strategy. In this study, we try to investigate how consumer perceives a new product, like DMB and how AD strategy change consumer's perception. More specifically, the paper segment consumers into sub-groups based on their DMB perceptions and compare their characteristics in order to understand how they perceive DMB. And, expose them different printed ADs that have messages guiding consumer think DMB in specific ways, either cellular phone or personal TV. Research Question 1: Segment consumers according to perceptions about DMB and compare characteristics of segmentations. Research Question 2: Compare perceptions about DMB after AD that induces categorization of DMB in direction for each segment. If one understand and predict a direction in which consumer perceive a new product, firm can select target customers easily. We segment consumers according to their perception and analyze characteristics in order to find some variables that can influence perceptions, like prior experience, usage, or habit. And then, marketing people can use this variables to identify target customers and predict their perceptions. If one knows how customer's perception is changed via AD message, communication strategy could be constructed properly. Specially, information from segmented customers helps to develop efficient AD strategy for segment who has prior perception. Research framework consists of two measurements and one treatment, O1 X O2. First observation is for collecting information about consumer's perception and their characteristics. Based on first observation, the paper segment consumers into two groups, one group perceives DMB similar to Cellular phone and the other group perceives DMB similar to TV. And compare characteristics of two segments in order to find reason why they perceive DMB differently. Next, we expose two kinds of AD to subjects. One AD describes DMB as Cellular phone and the other Ad describes DMB as personal TV. When two ADs are exposed to subjects, consumers don't know their prior perception of DMB, in other words, which subject belongs 'similar-to-Cellular phone' segment or 'similar-to-TV' segment? However, we analyze the AD's effect differently for each segment. In research design, final observation is for investigating AD effect. Perception before AD is compared with perception after AD. Comparisons are made for each segment and for each AD. For the segment who perceives DMB similar to TV, AD that describes DMB as cellular phone could change the prior perception. And AD that describes DMB as personal TV, could enforce the prior perception. For data collection, subjects are selected from undergraduate students because they have basic knowledge about most digital equipments and have open attitude about a new product and media. Total number of subjects is 240. In order to measure perception about DMB, we use indirect measurement, comparison with other similar digital products. To select similar digital products, we pre-survey students and then finally select PDA, Car-TV, Cellular Phone, MP3 player, TV, and PSP. Quasi experiment is done at several classes under instructor's allowance. After brief introduction, prior knowledge, awareness, and usage about DMB as well as other digital instruments is asked and their similarities and perceived characteristics are measured. And then, two kinds of manipulated color-printed AD are distributed and similarities and perceived characteristics for DMB are re-measured. Finally purchase intension, AD attitude, manipulation check, and demographic variables are asked. Subjects are given small gift for participation. Stimuli are color-printed advertising. Their actual size is A4 and made after several pre-test from AD professionals and students. As results, consumers are segmented into two subgroups based on their perceptions of DMB. Similarity measure between DMB and cellular phone and similarity measure between DMB and TV are used to classify consumers. If subject whose first measure is less than the second measure, she is classified into segment A and segment A is characterized as they perceive DMB like TV. Otherwise, they are classified as segment B, who perceives DMB like cellular phone. Discriminant analysis on these groups with their characteristics of usage and attitude shows that Segment A knows much about DMB and uses a lot of digital instrument. Segment B, who thinks DMB as cellular phone doesn't know well about DMB and not familiar with other digital instruments. So, consumers with higher knowledge perceive DMB similar to TV because launching DMB advertising lead consumer think DMB as TV. Consumers with less interest on digital products don't know well about DMB AD and then think DMB as cellular phone. In order to investigate perceptions of DMB as well as other digital instruments, we apply Proxscal analysis, Multidimensional Scaling technique at SPSS statistical package. At first step, subjects are presented 21 pairs of 7 digital instruments and evaluate similarity judgments on 7 point scale. And for each segment, their similarity judgments are averaged and similarity matrix is made. Secondly, Proxscal analysis of segment A and B are done. At third stage, get similarity judgment between DMB and other digital instruments after AD exposure. Lastly, similarity judgments of group A-1, A-2, B-1, and B-2 are named as 'after DMB' and put them into matrix made at the first stage. Then apply Proxscal analysis on these matrixes and check the positional difference of DMB and after DMB. The results show that map of segment A, who perceives DMB similar as TV, shows that DMB position closer to TV than to Cellular phone as expected. Map of segment B, who perceive DMB similar as cellular phone shows that DMB position closer to Cellular phone than to TV as expected. Stress value and R-square is acceptable. And, change results after stimuli, manipulated Advertising show that AD makes DMB perception bent toward Cellular phone when Cellular phone-like AD is exposed, and that DMB positioning move towards Car-TV which is more personalized one when TV-like AD is exposed. It is true for both segment, A and B, consistently. Furthermore, the paper apply correspondence analysis to the same data and find almost the same results. The paper answers two main research questions. The first one is that perception about a new product is made mainly from prior experience. And the second one is that AD is effective in changing and enforcing perception. In addition to above, we extend perception change to purchase intention. Purchase intention is high when AD enforces original perception. AD that shows DMB like TV makes worst intention. This paper has limitations and issues to be pursed in near future. Methodologically, current methodology can't provide statistical test on the perceptual change, since classical MDS models, like Proxscal and correspondence analysis are not probability models. So, a new probability MDS model for testing hypothesis about configuration needs to be developed. Next, advertising message needs to be developed more rigorously from theoretical and managerial perspective. Also experimental procedure could be improved for more realistic data collection. For example, web-based experiment and real product stimuli and multimedia presentation could be employed. Or, one can display products together in simulated shop. In addition, demand and social desirability threats of internal validity could influence on the results. In order to handle the threats, results of the model-intended advertising and other "pseudo" advertising could be compared. Furthermore, one can try various level of innovativeness in order to check whether it make any different results (cf. Moon 2006). In addition, if one can create hypothetical product that is really innovative and new for research, it helps to make a vacant impression status and then to study how to form impression in more rigorous way.