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Study on the Effects of Shop Choice Properties on Brand Attitudes: Focus on Six Major Coffee Shop Brands (점포선택속성이 브랜드 태도에 미치는 영향에 관한 연구: 6개 메이저 브랜드 커피전문점을 중심으로)

  • Yi, Weon-Ho;Kim, Su-Ok;Lee, Sang-Youn;Youn, Myoung-Kil
    • Journal of Distribution Science
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    • v.10 no.3
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    • pp.51-61
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    • 2012
  • This study seeks to understand how the choice of a coffee shop is related to a customer's loyalty and which characteristics of a shop influence this choice. It considers large-sized coffee shops brands whose market scale has gradually grown. The users' choice of shop is determined by price, employee service, shop location, and shop atmosphere. The study investigated the effects of these four properties on the brand attitudes of coffee shops. The effects were found to vary depending on users' characteristics. The properties with the largest influence were shop atmosphere and shop location Therefore, the purpose of the study was to examine the properties that could help coffee shops get loyal customers, and the choice properties that could satisfy consumers' desires The study examined consumers' perceptions of shop properties at selection of coffee shop and the difference between perceptual difference and coffee brand in order to investigate customers' desires and needs and to suggest ways that could supply products and service. The research methodology consisted of two parts: normative and empirical research, which includes empirical analysis and statistical analysis. In this study, a statistical analysis of the empirical research was carried out. The study theoretically confirmed the shop choice properties by reviewing previous studies and performed an empirical analysis including cross tabulation based on secondary material. The findings were as follows: First, coffee shop choice properties varied by gender. Price advantage influenced the choice of both men and women; men preferred nearer coffee shops where they could buy coffee easily and more conveniently than women did. The atmosphere of the coffee shop had the greatest influence on both men and women, and shop atmosphere was thought to be the most important for age analysis. In the past, customers selected coffee shops solely to drink coffee. Now, they select the coffee shop according to its interior, menu variety, and atmosphere owing to improved quality and service of coffee shop brands. Second, the prices of the brands did not vary much because the coffee shops were similarly priced. The service was thought to be more important and to elevate service quality so that price and employee service and other properties did not have a great influence on shop choice. However, those working in the farming, forestry, fishery, and livestock industries were more concerned with the price than the shop atmosphere. College and graduate school students were also affected by inexpensive price. Third, shop choice properties varied depending on income. The shop location and shop atmosphere had a greater influence on shop choice. The customers in an income bracket of less than 2 million won selected low-price coffee shops more than those earning 6 million won or more. Therefore, price advantage had no relation with difference in income. The higher income group was not affected by employee service. Fourth, shop choice properties varied depending on place. For instance, customers at Ulsan were the most affected by the price, and the ones at Busan were the least affected. The shop location had the greatest influence among all of the properties. Among the places surveyed, Gwangju had the least influence. The alternate use of space in a coffee shop was thought to be important in all the cities under consideration. The customers at Ulsan were not affected by employee service, and they selected coffee shops according to quality and preference of shop atmosphere. Lastly, the price factor was found to be a little higher than other factors when customers frequently selected brands according to shop properties. Customers at Gwangju reacted to discounts more than those in other cities did, and the former gave less priority to the quality and taste of coffee. Brand preference varied depending on coffee shop location. Customers at Busan selected brands according to the coffee shop location, and those at Ulsan were not influenced by employee kindness and specialty. The implications of this study are that franchise coffee shop businesses should focus on customers rather than aggressive marketing strategies that increase the number of coffee shops. Thus, they should create an environment with a good atmosphere and set up coffee shops in places that customers have good access to. This study has some limitations. First, the respondents were concentrated in metropolitan areas. Secondary data showed that the number of respondents at Seoul was much more than that at Gyeonggi-do. Furthermore, the number of respondents at Gyeonggi-do was much more than those at the six major cities in the nation. Thus, the regional sample was not representative enough of the population. Second, respondents' ratio was used as a measurement scale to test the perception of shop choice properties and brand preference. The difficulties arose when examining the relation between these properties and brand preference, as well as when understanding the difference between groups. Therefore, future research should seek to address some of the shortcomings of this study: If the coffee shops are being expanded to local areas, then a questionnaire survey of consumers at small cities in local areas shall be conducted to collect primary material. In particular, variables of the questionnaire survey shall be measured using Likert scales in order to include perception on shop choice properties, brand preference, and repurchase. Therefore, correlation analysis, multi-regression, and ANOVA shall be used for empirical analysis and to investigate consumers' attitudes and behavior in detail.

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Development of Yóukè Mining System with Yóukè's Travel Demand and Insight Based on Web Search Traffic Information (웹검색 트래픽 정보를 활용한 유커 인바운드 여행 수요 예측 모형 및 유커마이닝 시스템 개발)

  • Choi, Youji;Park, Do-Hyung
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.23 no.3
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    • pp.155-175
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    • 2017
  • As social data become into the spotlight, mainstream web search engines provide data indicate how many people searched specific keyword: Web Search Traffic data. Web search traffic information is collection of each crowd that search for specific keyword. In a various area, web search traffic can be used as one of useful variables that represent the attention of common users on specific interests. A lot of studies uses web search traffic data to nowcast or forecast social phenomenon such as epidemic prediction, consumer pattern analysis, product life cycle, financial invest modeling and so on. Also web search traffic data have begun to be applied to predict tourist inbound. Proper demand prediction is needed because tourism is high value-added industry as increasing employment and foreign exchange. Among those tourists, especially Chinese tourists: Youke is continuously growing nowadays, Youke has been largest tourist inbound of Korea tourism for many years and tourism profits per one Youke as well. It is important that research into proper demand prediction approaches of Youke in both public and private sector. Accurate tourism demands prediction is important to efficient decision making in a limited resource. This study suggests improved model that reflects latest issue of society by presented the attention from group of individual. Trip abroad is generally high-involvement activity so that potential tourists likely deep into searching for information about their own trip. Web search traffic data presents tourists' attention in the process of preparation their journey instantaneous and dynamic way. So that this study attempted select key words that potential Chinese tourists likely searched out internet. Baidu-Chinese biggest web search engine that share over 80%- provides users with accessing to web search traffic data. Qualitative interview with potential tourists helps us to understand the information search behavior before a trip and identify the keywords for this study. Selected key words of web search traffic are categorized by how much directly related to "Korean Tourism" in a three levels. Classifying categories helps to find out which keyword can explain Youke inbound demands from close one to far one as distance of category. Web search traffic data of each key words gathered by web crawler developed to crawling web search data onto Baidu Index. Using automatically gathered variable data, linear model is designed by multiple regression analysis for suitable for operational application of decision and policy making because of easiness to explanation about variables' effective relationship. After regression linear models have composed, comparing with model composed traditional variables and model additional input web search traffic data variables to traditional model has conducted by significance and R squared. after comparing performance of models, final model is composed. Final regression model has improved explanation and advantage of real-time immediacy and convenience than traditional model. Furthermore, this study demonstrates system intuitively visualized to general use -Youke Mining solution has several functions of tourist decision making including embed final regression model. Youke Mining solution has algorithm based on data science and well-designed simple interface. In the end this research suggests three significant meanings on theoretical, practical and political aspects. Theoretically, Youke Mining system and the model in this research are the first step on the Youke inbound prediction using interactive and instant variable: web search traffic information represents tourists' attention while prepare their trip. Baidu web search traffic data has more than 80% of web search engine market. Practically, Baidu data could represent attention of the potential tourists who prepare their own tour as real-time. Finally, in political way, designed Chinese tourist demands prediction model based on web search traffic can be used to tourism decision making for efficient managing of resource and optimizing opportunity for successful policy.

An Analysis of the Comparative Importance of Systematic Attributes for Developing an Intelligent Online News Recommendation System: Focusing on the PWYW Payment Model (지능형 온라인 뉴스 추천시스템 개발을 위한 체계적 속성간 상대적 중요성 분석: PWYW 지불모델을 중심으로)

  • Lee, Hyoung-Joo;Chung, Nuree;Yang, Sung-Byung
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.24 no.1
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    • pp.75-100
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    • 2018
  • Mobile devices have become an important channel for news content usage in our daily life. However, online news content readers' resistance to online news monetization is more serious than other digital content businesses, such as webtoons, music sources, videos, and games. Since major portal sites distribute online news content free of charge to increase their traffics, customers have been accustomed to free news content; hence this makes online news providers more difficult to switch their policies on business models (i.e., monetization policy). As a result, most online news providers are highly dependent on the advertising business model, which can lead to increasing number of false, exaggerated, or sensational advertisements inside the news website to maximize their advertising revenue. To reduce this advertising dependencies, many online news providers had attempted to switch their 'free' readers to 'paid' users, but most of them failed. However, recently, some online news media have been successfully applying the Pay-What-You-Want (PWYW) payment model, which allows readers to voluntarily pay fees for their favorite news content. These successful cases shed some lights to the managers of online news content provider regarding that the PWYW model can serve as an alternative business model. In this study, therefore, we collected 379 online news articles from Ohmynews.com that has been successfully employing the PWYW model, and analyzed the comparative importance of systematic attributes of online news content on readers' voluntary payment. More specifically, we derived the six systematic attributes (i.e., Type of Article Title, Image Stimulation, Article Readability, Article Type, Dominant Emotion, and Article-Image Similarity) and three or four levels within each attribute based on previous studies. Then, we conducted content analysis to measure five attributes except Article Readability attribute, measured by Flesch readability score. Before conducting main content analysis, the face reliabilities of chosen attributes were measured by three doctoral level researchers with 37 sample articles, and inter-coder reliabilities of the three coders were verified. Then, the main content analysis was conducted for two months from March 2017 with 379 online news articles. All 379 articles were reviewed by the same three coders, and 65 articles that showed inconsistency among coders were excluded before employing conjoint analysis. Finally, we examined the comparative importance of those six systematic attributes (Study 1), and levels within each of the six attributes (Study 2) through conjoint analysis with 314 online news articles. From the results of conjoint analysis, we found that Article Readability, Article-Image Similarity, and Type of Article Title are the most significant factors affecting online news readers' voluntary payment. First, it can be interpreted that if the level of readability of an online news article is in line with the readers' level of readership, the readers will voluntarily pay more. Second, the similarity between the content of the article and the image within it enables the readers to increase the information acceptance and to transmit the message of the article more effectively. Third, readers expect that the article title would reveal the content of the article, and the expectation influences the understanding and satisfaction of the article. Therefore, it is necessary to write an article with an appropriate readability level, and use images and title well matched with the content to make readers voluntarily pay more. We also examined the comparative importance of levels within each attribute in more details. Based on findings of two studies, two major and nine minor propositions are suggested for future empirical research. This study has academic implications in that it is one of the first studies applying both content analysis and conjoint analysis together to examine readers' voluntary payment behavior, rather than their intention to pay. In addition, online news content creators, providers, and managers could find some practical insights from this research in terms of how they should produce news content to make readers voluntarily pay more for their online news content.

Media Habits of Sensation Seekers (감지추구자적매체습관(感知追求者的媒体习惯))

  • Blakeney, Alisha;Findley, Casey;Self, Donald R.;Ingram, Rhea;Garrett, Tony
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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    • v.20 no.2
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    • pp.179-187
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    • 2010
  • Understanding consumers' preferences and use of media types is imperative for marketing and advertising managers, especially in today's fragmented market. A clear understanding assists managers in making more effective selections of appropriate media outlets, yet individuals' choices of type and use of media are based on a variety of characteristics. This paper examines one personality trait, sensation seeking, which has not appeared in the literature examining "new" media preferences and use. Sensation seeking is a personality trait defined as "the need for varied, novel, and complex sensations and experiences and the willingness to take physical and social risks for the sake of such experiences" (Zuckerman 1979). Six hypotheses were developed from a review of the literature. Particular attention was given to the Uses and Gratification theory (Katz 1959), which explains various reasons why people choose media types and their motivations for using the different types of media. Current theory suggests that High Sensation Seekers (HSS), due to their needs for novelty, arousal and unconventional content and imagery, would exhibit higher frequency of use of new media. Specifically, we hypothesize that HSS will use the internet more than broadcast (H1a) or print media (H1b) and more than low (LSS) (H2a) or medium sensation seekers (MSS) (H2b). In addition, HSS have been found to be more social and have higher numbers of friends therefore are expected to use social networking websites such as Facebook/MySpace (H3) and chat rooms (H4) more than LSS (a) and MSS (b). Sensation seekers can manifest into a range of behaviors including disinhibition,. It is expected that alternative social networks such as Facebook/MySpace (H5) and chat rooms (H6) will be used more often for those who have higher levels of disinhibition than low (a) or medium (b) levels. Data were collected using an online survey of participants in extreme sports. In order to reach this group, an improved version of a snowball sampling technique, chain-referral method, was used to select respondents for this study. This method was chosen as it is regarded as being effective to reach otherwise hidden population groups (Heckathorn, 1997). A final usable sample of 1108 respondents, which was mainly young (56.36% under 34), male (86.1%) and middle class (58.7% with household incomes over USD 50,000) was consistent with previous studies on sensation seeking. Sensation seeking was captured using an existing measure, the Brief Sensation Seeking Scale (Hoyle et al., 2002). Media usage was captured by measuring the self reported usage of various media types. Results did not support H1a and b. HSS did not show higher levels of usage of alternative media such as the internet showing in fact lower mean levels of usage than all the other types of media. The highest media type used by HSS was print media, suggesting that there is a revolt against the mainstream. Results support H2a and b that HSS are more frequent users of the internet than LSS or MSS. Further analysis revealed that there are significant differences in the use of print media between HSS and LSS, suggesting that HSS may seek out more specialized print publications in their respective extreme sport activity. Hypothesis 3a and b showed that HSS use Facebook/MySpace more frequently than either LSS or MSS. There were no significant differences in the use of chat rooms between LSS and HSS, so as a consequence no support for H4a, although significant for MSS H4b. Respondents with varying levels of disinhibition were expected to have different levels of use of Facebook/MySpace and chat-rooms. There was support for the higher levels of use of Facebook/MySpace for those with high levels of disinhibition than low or medium levels, supporting H5a and b. Similarly there was support for H6b, Those with high levels of disinhibition use chat-rooms significantly more than those with medium levels but not for low levels (H6a). The findings are counterintuitive and give some interesting insights for managers. First, although HSS use online media more frequently than LSS or MSS, this groups use of online media is less than either print or broadcast media. The advertising executive should not place too much emphasis on online media for this important market segment. Second, social media, such as facebook/Myspace and chatrooms should be examined by managers as potential ways to reach this group. Finally, there is some implication for public policy by the higher levels of use of social media by those who are disinhibited. These individuals are more inclined to engage in more socially risky behavior which may have some dire implications, e.g. by internet predators or future employers. There is a limitation in the study in that only those who engage in extreme sports are included. This is by nature a HSS activity. A broader population is therefore needed to test if these results hold.

An Exploratory Study on the Competition Patterns Between Internet Sites in Korea (한국 인터넷사이트들의 산업별 경쟁유형에 대한 탐색적 연구)

  • Park, Yoonseo;Kim, Yongsik
    • Asia Marketing Journal
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    • v.12 no.4
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    • pp.79-111
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    • 2011
  • Digital economy has grown rapidly so that the new business area called 'Internet business' has been dramatically extended as time goes on. However, in the case of Internet business, market shares of individual companies seem to fluctuate very extremely. Thus marketing managers who operate the Internet sites have seriously observed the competition structure of the Internet business market and carefully analyzed the competitors' behavior in order to achieve their own business goals in the market. The newly created Internet business might differ from the offline ones in management styles, because it has totally different business circumstances when compared with the existing offline businesses. Thus, there should be a lot of researches for finding the solutions about what the features of Internet business are and how the management style of those Internet business companies should be changed. Most marketing literatures related to the Internet business have focused on individual business markets. Specifically, many researchers have studied the Internet portal sites and the Internet shopping mall sites, which are the most general forms of Internet business. On the other hand, this study focuses on the entire Internet business industry to understand the competitive circumstance of online market. This approach makes it possible not only to have a broader view to comprehend overall e-business industry, but also to understand the differences in competition structures among Internet business markets. We used time-series data of Internet connection rates by consumers as the basic data to figure out the competition patterns in the Internet business markets. Specifically, the data for this research was obtained from one of Internet ranking sites, 'Fian'. The Internet business ranking data is obtained based on web surfing record of some pre-selected sample group where the possibility of double-count for page-views is controlled by method of same IP check. The ranking site offers several data which are very useful for comparison and analysis of competitive sites. The Fian site divides the Internet business areas into 34 area and offers market shares of big 5 sites which are on high rank in each category daily. We collected the daily market share data about Internet sites on each area from April 22, 2008 to August 5, 2008, where some errors of data was found and 30 business area data were finally used for our research after the data purification. This study performed several empirical analyses in focusing on market shares of each site to understand the competition among sites in Internet business of Korea. We tried to perform more statistically precise analysis for looking into business fields with similar competitive structures by applying the cluster analysis to the data. The research results are as follows. First, the leading sites in each area were classified into three groups based on averages and standard deviations of daily market shares. The first group includes the sites with the lowest market shares, which give more increased convenience to consumers by offering the Internet sites as complimentary services for existing offline services. The second group includes sites with medium level of market shares, where the site users are limited to specific small group. The third group includes sites with the highest market shares, which usually require online registration in advance and have difficulty in switching to another site. Second, we analyzed the second place sites in each business area because it may help us understand the competitive power of the strongest competitor against the leading site. The second place sites in each business area were classified into four groups based on averages and standard deviations of daily market shares. The four groups are the sites showing consistent inferiority compared to the leading sites, the sites with relatively high volatility and medium level of shares, the sites with relatively low volatility and medium level of shares, the sites with relatively low volatility and high level of shares whose gaps are not big compared to the leading sites. Except 'web agency' area, these second place sites show relatively stable shares below 0.1 point of standard deviation. Third, we also classified the types of relative strength between leading sites and the second place sites by applying the cluster analysis to the gap values of market shares between two sites. They were also classified into four groups, the sites with the relatively lowest gaps even though the values of standard deviation are various, the sites with under the average level of gaps, the sites with over the average level of gaps, the sites with the relatively higher gaps and lower volatility. Then we also found that while the areas with relatively bigger gap values usually have smaller standard deviation values, the areas with very small differences between the first and the second sites have a wider range of standard deviation values. The practical and theoretical implications of this study are as follows. First, the result of this study might provide the current market participants with the useful information to understand the competitive circumstance of the market and build the effective new business strategy for the market success. Also it might be useful to help new potential companies find a new business area and set up successful competitive strategies. Second, it might help Internet marketing researchers take a macro view of the overall Internet market so that make possible to begin the new studies on overall Internet market beyond individual Internet market studies.

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An Exploratory Study on the Components of Visual Merchandising of Internet Shopping Mall (인터넷쇼핑몰의 VMD 구성요인에 대한 탐색적 연구)

  • Kim, Kwang-Seok;Shin, Jong-Kuk;Koo, Dong-Mo
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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    • v.18 no.2
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    • pp.19-45
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    • 2008
  • This study is to empirically examine the primary dimensions of visual merchandising (VMD) of internet shopping mall, namely store design, merchandise, and merchandising cues, to be a attractive virtual store to the shoppers. The authors reviewed the literature related to the major components of VMD from the perspective of the AIDA model, which has been mainly applied to the offline store settings. The major purposes of the study are as follows; first, tries to derive the variables related with the components of visual merchandising through reviewing the existing literatures, establish the hypotheses, and test it empirically. Second, examines the relationships between the components of VMD and the attitude toward the VMD, however, putting more emphasis on finding out the component structure of the VMD. VMD needs to be examined with the perspective that an online shopping mall is a virtual self-service or clerkless store, which could reduce the number of employees, help the shoppers search, evaluate and purchase for themselves, and to be explored in terms of the in-store persuasion processes of customers. This study reviewed the literatures related to store design, merchandise, and merchandising cues which might be relevant to the store, product, and promotion respectively. VMD is a total communication tool, and AIDA model could explain the in-store consumer behavior of online shopping. Store design has to do with triggering a consumer attention to the online mall, merchandise with a product related interest, and merchandising cues with promotions such as recommendation and links that induce the desire to pruchase. These three steps might be seen as the processes for purchase actions. The theoretical rationale for the relationship between VMD and AIDA could be found in Tyagi(2005) that the three steps of consumer-oriented merchandising are a store, a product assortment, and placement, in Omar(1999) that three types of interior display are a architectural design display, commodity display, and point-of-sales(POS) display, and in Davies and Ward(2005) that the retail store interior image is related to an atmosphere, merchandise, and in-store promotion. Lee et al(2000) suggested as the web merchandising components a merchandising cues, a shopping metaphor which is an assistant tool for search, a store design, a layout(web design), and a product assortment. The store design which includes differentiation, simplicity and navigation is supposed to be related to the attention to the virtual store. Second, the merchandise dimensions comprising product assortments, visual information and product reputation have to do with the interest in the product offerings. Finally, the merchandising cues that refer to merchandiser(MD)'s recommendation of products and providing the hyperlinks to relevant goods for the shopper is concerned with attempt to induce the desire to purchase. The questionnaire survey was carried out to collect the data about the consumers who would shop at internet shopping malls frequently. To select the subject malls, the mall ranking data announced by a mall rating agency was used to differentiate the most popular and least popular five mall each. The subjects was instructed to answer the questions after navigating the designated mall for five minutes. The 300 questionnaire was distributed to the consumers, 166 samples were used in the final analysis. The empirical testing focused on identifying and confirming the dimensionality of VMD and its subdimensions using a structural equation modeling method. The confirmatory factor analysis for the endogeneous and exogeneous variables was carried out in four parts. The second-order factor analysis was done for a store design, a merchandise, and a merchandising cues, and first-order confirmatory factor analysis for the attitude toward the VMD. The model test results shows that the chi-square value of structural equation is 144.39(d.f 49), significant at 0.01 level which means the proposed model was rejected. But, judging from the ratio of chi-square value vs. degree of freedom, the ratio was 2.94 which smaller than an acceptable level of 3.0, RMR is 0.087 which is higher than a generally acceptable level of 0.08. GFI and AGFI is turned out to be 0.90 and 0.84 respectively. Both NFI and NNFI is 0.94, and CFI 0.95. The major test results are as follows; first, the second-order factor analysis and structural equational modeling reveals that the differentiation, simplicity and ease of identifying current status of the transaction are confirmed to be subdimensions of store design and to be a significant predictors of the dependent variable. This result implies that when designing an online shopping mall, it is necessary to differentiate visually from other malls to improve the effectiveness of the communications of store design. That is, the differentiated store design raise the contrast stimulus to sensory organs to promote the memory of the store and to have a favorable attitude toward the VMD of a store. The results that navigation which means the easiness of identifying current status of shopping affects the attitude to VMD could be interpreted that the navigating processes via the hyperlinks which is characteristics of an internet shopping is a complex and cognitive process and shoppers are likely to lack the sense of overall structure of the store. Consequently, shoppers are likely to be alost amid shopping not knowing where to go. The orientation tool enhance the accessibility of information to raise the perceptive power about the store environment.(Titus & Everett 1995) Second, the primary dimension of merchandise and its subdimensions was confirmed to be unidimensional respectively, have a construct validity, and nomological validity which the VMD dimensions supposed to have a positive correlation with the dependent variable. The subdimensions of product assortment, brand fame and information provision proved to have a positive effect on the attitude toward the VMD. It could be interpreted that the more plentiful the product and brand assortment of the mall is, the more likely the shoppers to favor it. Brand fame and information provision as well affect the VMD attitude, which means that the more famous the brand, the more likely the shoppers would trust and feel familiar with the mall, and the plentifully and visually presented information could have the shopper have a favorable attitude toward the store VMD. Third, it turned out to be that merchandising cue of product recommendation and hyperlinks affect the VMD attitude. This could be interpreted that recommended products could reduce the uncertainty related with the purchase decision, and the hyperlinks to relevant products would help the shopper save the cognitive effort exerted into the information search and gathering, which could lead to a favorable attitude to the VMD. This study tried to sheds some new light on the VMD of online store by reviewing the variables mentioned to be relevant with offline VMD in the existing literatures, and tried to link the VMD components from the perspective of AIDA model. The effect size of the VMD dimensions on the attitude was in the order of the merchandise, the store design and the merchandising cues.It is said that an internet has an unlimited place for display, however, the virtual store is not unlimited since the consumer has a limited amount of cognitive ability to process the external information and internal memory. Particularly, the shoppers are likely to face some difficulties in decision making on account of too many alternative and information overloads. Therefore, the internet shopping mall manager should take into consideration the cost of information search on the part of the consumer, to establish the optimal product placements and search routes. An efficient store composition would be possible by reducing the psychological burdens and cognitive efforts exerted to information search and alternatives evaluation. The store image is in most part determined by the product category and its brand it deals in. The results of this study support this proposition that the merchandise is most important to the VMD attitude than other components, the manager is required to take a strategic approach to VMD. The internet users are getting more accustomed and more knowledgeable about the internet media and more likely to accept the internet as a shopping channel as the period of time during which they use the internet to shop become longer. The web merchandiser should be aware that the product introduction using a moving pictures and a bulletin board become more important in order to present the interactive product information visually and communicate with customers more actively, therefore leading to making the quantity and quality of product information more rich.

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The Effects on CRM Performance and Relationship Quality of Successful Elements in the Establishment of Customer Relationship Management: Focused on Marketing Approach (CRM구축과정에서 마케팅요인이 관계품질과 CRM성과에 미치는 영향)

  • Jang, Hyeong-Yu
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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    • v.18 no.4
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    • pp.119-155
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    • 2008
  • Customer Relationship Management(CRM) has been a sustainable competitive edge of many companies. CRM analyzes customer data for designing and executing targeted marketing analysing customer behavior in order to make decisions relating to products and services including management information system. It is critical for companies to get and maintain profitable customers. How to manage relationships with customers effectively has become an important issue for both academicians and practitioners in recent years. However, the existing academic literature and the practical applications of customer relationship management(CRM) strategies have been focused on the technical process and organizational structure about the implementation of CRM. These limited focus on CRM lead to the result of numerous reports of failed implementations of various types of CRM projects. Many of these failures are also related to the absence of marketing approach. Identifying successful factors and outcomes focused on marketing concept before introducing a CRM project are a pre-implementation requirements. Many researchers have attempted to find the factors that contribute to the success of CRM. However, these research have some limitations in terms of marketing approach without explaining how the marketing based factors contribute to the CRM success. An understanding of how to manage relationship with crucial customers effectively based marketing approach has become an important topic for both academicians and practitioners. However, the existing papers did not provide a clear antecedent and outcomes factors focused on marketing approach. This paper attempt to validate whether or not such various marketing factors would impact on relational quality and CRM performance in terms of marketing oriented perceptivity. More specifically, marketing oriented factors involving market orientation, customer orientation, customer information orientation, and core customer orientation can influence relationship quality(satisfaction and trust) and CRM outcome(customer retention and customer share). Another major goals of this research are to identify the effect of relationship quality on CRM outcomes consisted of customer retention and share to show the relationship strength between two factors. Based on meta analysis for conventional studies, I can construct the following research model. An empirical study was undertaken to test the hypotheses with data from various companies. Multiple regression analysis and t-test were employed to test the hypotheses. The reliability and validity of our measurements were tested by using Cronbach's alpha coefficient and principal factor analysis respectively, and seven hypotheses were tested through performing correlation test and multiple regression analysis. The first key outcome is a theoretically and empirically sound CRM factors(marketing orientation, customer orientation, customer information orientation, and core customer orientation.) in the perceptive of marketing. The intensification of ${\beta}$coefficient among antecedents factors in terms of marketing was not same. In particular, The effects on customer trust of marketing based CRM antecedents were significantly confirmed excluding core customer orientation. It was notable that the direct effects of core customer orientation on customer trust were not exist. This means that customer trust which is firmly formed by long term tasks will not be directly linked to the core customer orientation. the enduring management concerned with this interactions is probably more important for the successful implementation of CRM. The second key result is that the implementation and operation of successful CRM process in terms of marketing approach have a strong positive association with both relationship quality(customer trust/customer satisfaction) and CRM performance(customer retention and customer possession). The final key fact that relationship quality has a strong positive effect on customer retention and customer share confirms that improvements in customer satisfaction and trust improve accessibility to customers, provide more consistent service and ensure value-for-money within the front office which result in growth of customer retention and customer share. Particularly, customer satisfaction and trust which is main components of relationship quality are found to be positively related to the customer retention and customer share. Interactive managements of these main variables play key roles in connecting the successful antecedent of CRM with final outcome involving customer retention and share. Based on research results, This paper suggest managerial implications concerned with constructions and executions of CRM focusing on the marketing perceptivity. I can conclude in general the CRM can be achieved by the recognition of antecedents and outcomes based on marketing concept. The implementation of marketing concept oriented CRM will be connected with finding out about customers' purchasing habits, opinions and preferences profiling individuals and groups to market more effectively and increase sales changing the way you operate to improve customer service and marketing. Benefiting from CRM is not just a question of investing the right software, but adapt CRM users to the concept of marketing including marketing orientation, customer orientation, and customer information orientation. No one deny that CRM is a process or methodology used to develop stronger relationships being composed of many technological components, but thinking about CRM in primarily technological terms is a big mistake. We can infer from this paper that the more useful way to think and implement about CRM is as a process that will help bring together lots of pieces of marketing concept about customers, marketing effectiveness, and market trends. Finally, a real situation we conducted our research may enable academics and practitioners to understand the antecedents and outcomes in the perceptive of marketing more clearly.

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The Effects of Perceived Quality Factors on the Customer Loyalty: Focused on the Analysis of Difference between PB and NB (지각된 품질요인이 고객충성도에 미치는 영향: PB와 NB간의 차이분석)

  • Ye, Jong-Suk;Jun, So-Yon
    • Journal of Distribution Research
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    • v.15 no.2
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    • pp.1-34
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    • 2010
  • Introduction As consumers' purchase behavior change into a rational and practical direction, the discount store industry came to have keen competition along with rapid external growth. Therefore as a solution, distribution businesses are concentrating on developing PB(Private Brand) which can realize differentiation and profitability at the same time. And as improvement in customer loyalty beyond customer satisfaction is effective in surviving in an environment with keen competition, PB is being used as a strategic tool to improve customer loyalty. To improve loyalty among PB users, it is necessary to develop PB by examining properties of a customer group, first of all, quality level perceived by consumers should be met to obtain customer satisfaction and customer trust and consequently induce customer loyalty. To provide results of systematic analysis on relations between antecedents influenced perceived quality and variables affecting customer loyalty, this study proposed a research model based on causal relations verified in prior researches and set 16 hypotheses about relations among 9 theoretical variables. Data was collected from 400 adult customers residing in Seoul and the Metropolitan area and using large scale discount stores, among them, 375 copies were analyzed using SPSS 15.0 and Amos 7.0. The findings of the present study followed as; We ascertained that the higher company reputation, brand reputation, product experience and brand familiarity, the higher perceived quality. The study also examined the higher perceived quality, the higher customer satisfaction, customer trust and customer loyalty. The findings showed that the higher customer satisfaction and customer trust, the higher customer loyalty. As for moderating effects between PB and NB in terms of influences of perceived quality factors on perceived quality, we can ascertain that PB was higher than NB in the influences of company reputation on perceived quality while NB was higher than PB in the influences of brand reputation and brand familiarity on perceived quality. These results of empirical analysis will be useful for those concerned to do marketing activities based on a clearer understanding of antecedents and consecutive factors influenced perceived quality. At last, discussions about academical and managerial implications in these results, we suggested the limitations of this study and the future research directions. Research Model and Hypotheses Test After analyzing if antecedent variables having influence on perceived quality shows any difference between PB and NB in terms of their influences on them, the relation between variables that have influence on customer loyalty was determined as Figure 1. We established 16 hypotheses to test and hypotheses are as follows; H1-1: Perceived price has a positive effect on perceived quality. H1-2: It is expected that PB and NB would have different influence in terms of perceived price on perceived quality. H2-1: Company reputation has a positive effect on perceived quality. H2-2: It is expected that PB and NB would have different influence in terms of company reputation on perceived quality. H3-1: Brand reputation has a positive effect on perceived quality. H3-2: It is expected that PB and NB would have different influence in terms of brand reputation on perceived quality. H4-1: Product experience has a positive effect on perceived quality. H4-2: It is expected that PB and NB would have different influence in terms of product experience on perceived quality. H5-1: Brand familiarity has a positive effect on perceived quality. H5-2: It is expected that PB and NB would have different influence in terms of brand familiarity on perceived quality. H6: Perceived quality has a positive effect on customer satisfaction. H7: Perceived quality has a positive effect on customer trust. H8: Perceived quality has a positive effect on customer loyalty. H9: Customer satisfaction has a positive effect on customer trust. H10: Customer satisfaction has a positive effect on customer loyalty. H11: Customer trust has a positive effect on customer loyalty. Results from analyzing main effects of research model is shown as

    , and moderating effects is shown as
    . Results This study is designed with 16 research hypotheses, Results from analyzing their main effects show that 9 of 11 hypotheses were supported and other 2 hypotheses were rejected. On the other hand, results from analyzing their moderating effects show that 3 of 5 hypotheses were supported and other 2 hypotheses were rejected. H1-1: (SPC: Standardized Path Coefficient)=-0.04, t-value=-1.04, p>. 05). H1-2: (${\Delta}\chi^2$=1.10, df=1, p> 0.05). H1-1 and H1-2 are rejected, so it is prove that perceived price is not a significant decision variable having influence on perceived quality and there is no significant variable between PB and NB in terms of influence of perceived price on perceived quality. H2-1: (SPC=0.31, t-value=3.74, p<. 001). H2-2: (${\Delta}\chi^2$=3.93, df=1, p< 0.05). H2-1 and H2-2 are supported, so it is proved that company reputation is a significant decision variable having influence on perceived quality and, in terms of influence of company reputation on perceived quality, PB has relatively stronger influence than NB. H3-1: (SPC=0.26, t-value=5.30, p< .001). H3-2: (${\Delta}\chi^2$=16.81, df=1, p< 0.01). H3-1 and H3-2 are supported, so it is proved that brand reputation is a significant decision variable having influence on perceived quality and, in terms of influence of brand reputation on perceived quality, NB has relatively stronger influence than PB. H4-1: (SPC=0.31, t-value=2.65, p< .05). H4-2: (${\Delta}\chi^2$=1.26, df=1, p> 0.05). H4-1 is supported, but H4-2 is rejected, Therefore, it is proved that product experience is a significant decision variable having influence on perceived quality and, on the other hand, there is no significant different between PB and NB in terms of influence of product experience on product quality. H5-1: (SPC=0.24, t-value=3.00, p<. 05). H5-2: (${\Delta}\chi^2$=5.10, df=1, p< 0.05). H5-1 and H5-2 are supported, so it is proved that brand familiarity is a significant decision variable having influence on perceived quality and, in terms of influence of brand familiarity on perceived quality, NB has relatively stronger influence than PB. H6: (SPC=0.91, t-value=19.06, p< .001). H6 is supported, so a fact that customer satisfaction increases as perceived quality increases is proved. H7: (SPC=0.81, t-value=7.44, p<. 001). H7 is supported, so a fact that customer trust increases as perceived quality increases is proved. H8: (SPC=0.57, t-value=7.87, p< .001). H8 is supported, so a fact that customer loyalty increases as perceived quality increases is proved. H9: (SPC=0.08, t-value=0.76, p> .05). H9 is rejected, so it is proved influence of customer satisfaction on customer trust is not significant. H10: (SPC=0.21, t-value=4.34, p< .001). H10 is supported, so a fact that customer loyalty increases as customer satisfaction increases is proved. H11: (SPC=0.40, t-value=5.68, p< .001). H11 is supported, so a fact that customer loyalty increases as customer trust increases is proved. Implications Although most of existing studies have used function, price, brand, design, service, brand name, store name as antecedent variables for perceived quality, this study used different antecedent variables in order to analyze and distinguish purchase group PB and NB through preliminary research. Therefore, this study may be used as preliminary data for a empirical study that is designed to be helpful for practical jobs. Also, this study is made to be easily applied to any practical job because SEM(Structural Equation Modeling), most strongly explaining the relation between observed variable and latent variable, is used for this study. This study suggests a new strategic point that, in order to increase customer loyalty, customer's perceived quality level should satisfied for inducing customer satisfaction, customer trust, and customer loyalty. Therefore, after finding an effective differentiating factors in perceived quality in order to increase customer loyalty through increasing perceived quality, this factor was made to be applied to PB and NB. Because perceived quality factors which is recognized as being important by consumers is different between PB and NB, this study suggests how to efficiently establish marketing strategy by enhancing a factor. Companies have mostly focused on profitability in terms of analyzing customer loyalty, but this study included positive WOM(word of mouth). Hence, this study suggests that it would be helpful for establishing customer loyalty when consumers have cognitive satisfaction and emotional satisfaction together. Limitations This study used variables perceived price, company reputation, brand reputation, product experience, brand familiarity in order to determine whether each constituent factor has different influence on perceived quality between purchase group PB and NB. These characteristic variables are made up on the basis of the preliminary research, but it is expected that more precise research result would be obtained if additional various variables are included in study. This study selected a practical product that is non-durable, low-priced and bestselling product in a discount store through the preliminary research because it can be easily estimated by consumers. Therefore. generalization of study would be more easily obtained if more various product characteristics is included. Regarding a sample used in this study, it was only based on consumers who purchase products in a large-scale discount store located in Seoul and in the capital area. Accordingly, this sample has some geographical limitation, If a study is expanded by including more areas, more representative research results may be produced. Because this study is only designed to analyze consumers who purchase a product in a large-scale discount store, some difference may be found according to characteristics of each business type. In other words, there is certainly some application limitation, so research result from this study may not be applied to other business types. Future research may have fruitful results if it adjusts a variable to each business type.

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  • The Influence of Store Environment on Service Brand Personality and Repurchase Intention (점포의 물리적 환경이 서비스 브랜드 개성과 재구매의도에 미치는 영향)

    • Kim, Hyoung-Gil;Kim, Jung-Hee;Kim, Youn-Jeong
      • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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      • v.17 no.4
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      • pp.141-173
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      • 2007
    • The study examines how the environmental factors of store influence service brand personality and repurchase intention in the service environment. The service industry has been experiencing the intensified competition with the industry's continuous growth and the influence from rapid technological advancement. Under the circumstances, it has become ever more important for the brand competitiveness to be distinctively recognized against competition. A brand needs to be distinguished and differentiated from competing companies because they are all engaged in the similar environment of the service industry. The differentiation of brand achievement has become increasingly important to highlight certain brand functions to include emotional, self-expressive, and symbolic functions since the importance of such functions has been further emphasized in promoting consumption activities. That is the recent role of brand personality that has been emphasized in the service industry. In other words, customers now freely and actively express their personalities or egos in consumption activities, taking an important role in construction of a brand asset. Hence, the study suggests that it is necessary to disperse the recognition and acknowledgement that the maintenance of the existing customers contributes more to boost repurchase intention when it is compared to the efforts to create new customers, particularly in the service industry. Meanwhile, the store itself can offer a unique environment that may influence the consumer's purchase decision. Consumers interact with store environments in the process of,virtually, all household purchase they make (Sarel 1981). Thus, store environments may encourage customers to purchase. The roles that store environments play are to provide informational cues to customers about the store and goods and communicate messages to stimulate consumers' emotions. The store environments differentiate the store from competing stores and build a unique service brand personality. However, the existing studies related to brand in the service industry mostly concentrated on the relationship between the quality of service and customer satisfaction, and they are mostly generalized while the connective studies focused on brand personality. Such approaches show limitations and are insufficient to investigate on the relationship between store environment and brand personality in the service industry. Accordingly, the study intends to identify the level of contribution to the establishment of brand personality made by the store's physical environments that influence on the specific brand characteristics depending on the type of service. The study also intends to identify what kind of relationships with brand personality exists with brand personality while being influenced by store environments. In addition, the study intends to make meaningful suggestions to better direct marketing efforts by identifying whether a brand personality makes a positive influence to induce an intention for repurchase. For this study, the service industry is classified into four categories based on to the characteristics of service: experimental-emotional service, emotional -credible service, credible-functional service, and functional-experimental service. The type of business with the most frequent customer contact is determined for each service type and the enterprise with the highest brand value in each service sector based on the report made by the Korea Management Association. They are designated as the representative of each category. The selected representatives are a fast-food store (experimental-emotional service), a cinema house (emotional-credible service), a bank (credible-functional service), and discount store (functional-experimental service). The survey was conducted for the four selected brands to represent each service category among consumers who are experienced users of the designated stores in Seoul Metropolitan City and Gyeonggi province via written questionnaires in order to verify the suggested assumptions in the study. In particular, the survey adopted 15 scales, which represent each characteristic factor, among the 42 unique characteristics developed by Jennifer Aaker(1997) to assess the brand personality of each service brand. SPSS for Windows Release 12.0 and LISREL were used in the analysis of data verification. The methodology of the structural equation model was used for the study and the pivotal findings are as follows. 1) The environmental factors ware classified as design factors, ambient factors, and social factors. Therefore, the validity of measurement scale of Baker et al. (1994) was proved. 2) The service brand personalities were subdivided as sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and ruggedness, which makes the use of the brand personality scales by Jennifer Aaker(1997) appropriate in the service industry as well. 3) One-way ANOVA analysis on the scales of store environment and service brand personality showed that there exist statistically significant differences in each service category. For example, the social factors were highest in discount stores, while the ambient factors and design factors were highest in fast-food stores. The discount stores were highest in the sincerity and excitement, while the highest point for banks was in the competence and ruggedness, and the highest point for fast-food stores was in the sophistication, The consumers will make a different respond to the physical environment of stores and service brand personality that are inherent to the corresponding service interface. Hence, the customers will make a different decision-making when dealing with different service categories. In this aspect, the relationships of variables in the proposed hypothesis appear to work in a different way depending on the exposed service category. 4) The store environment factors influenced on service brand personalities differently by category of service. The factors of store's physical environment are transferred to a brand and were verified to strengthen service brand personalities. In particular, the level of influence on the service brand personality by physical environment differs depending on service category or dimension, which indicates that there is a need to apply a different style of management to a different service category or dimension. It signifies that there needs to be a brand strategy established in order to positively influence the relationship with consumers by utilizing an appropriate brand personality factor depending on different characteristics by service category or dimension. 5) The service brand personalities influenced on the repurchase intention. Especially, the largest influence was made in the sophistication dimension of service brand personality scale; the unique and characteristically appropriate arrangement of physical environment will make customers stay in the service environment for a long time and will lead to give a positive influence on the repurchase intention. 6) The store environment factors influenced on the repurchase intention. Particularly, the largest influence was made on the social factors of store environment. The most intriguing finding is that the service factor among all other environment factors gives the biggest influence to the repurchase intention in most of all service types except fast-food stores. Such result indicates that the customers pay attention to how much the employees try to provide a quality service when they make an evaluation on the service brand. At the same time, it also indicates that the personal factor is directly transmitted to the construction of brand personality. The employees' attitude and behavior are the determinants to establish a service brand personality in the process of enhancing service interface. Hence, there should be a reinforced search for a method to efficiently manage the service staff who has a direct contact with customers in order to make an affirmative improvement of the customers' brand evaluation at the service interface. The findings suggest several managerial implications. 1) Results from the empirical study indicated that store environment factors have a strong positive impact on a service brand personality. To increase customers' repurchase intention of a service brand, the management is required to effectively manage store environment factors and create a friendly brand personality based on the corresponding service environment. 2) Mangers and researchers must understand and recognize that the store environment elements are important marketing tools, and that brand personality influences on consumers' repurchase intention. Based on such result of the study, a service brand could be utilized as an efficient measure to achieve a differentiation by enforcing the elements that are most influential among all other store environments for each service category. Therefore, brand personality established involving various store environments will further reinforce the relationship with customers through the elevated brand identification of which utilization to induce repurchase decision can be used as an entry barrier. 3) The study identified the store environment as a component of service brand personality for the store's effective communication with consumers. For this, all communication channels should be maintained with consistency and an integrated marketing communication should be executed to efficiently approach to a larger number of customers. Mangers and researchers must find strategies for aligning decisions about store environment elements with the retailers' marketing and store personality objectives. All ambient, design, and social factors need to be orchestrated so that consumers can take an appropriate store personality. In this study, the induced results from the previous studies were extended to the service industry so as to identify the customers' decision making process that leads to repurchase intention and a result similar to those of the previous studies. The findings suggested several theoretical and managerial implications. However, the situation that only one service brand served as the subject of analysis for each service category, and the situation that correlations among store environment elements were not identified, as well as the problem of representation in selection of samples should be considered and supplemented in the future when further studies are conducted. In addition, various antecedents and consequences of brand personality must be looked at in the aspect of the service environment for further research.

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