• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.3478-3489
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• 2014

Because the increased number of Internet users and the common use of IT technology via the expansion of domestic IT infrastructure have increased the web site use of companies, Internet users have begun to experience a range of online websites. In a digital environment, entrepreneurial companies who have limited resources will require effective management by analyzing the critical factors of the website quality assessment and focusing their resources to seize the market because the website quality built in the company directly affects the satisfaction and purchase activity of the customers. In this study, a total of 523 surveys from the customers visiting online websites of the entrepreneurial companies were collected to analyze the factors between the influencing factors and satisfaction and purchase intention using the ServQual method in the AMOS 18.0 program. This analysis showed that the customers visiting the website are satisfied with the factors of tangibility, reliability and responsiveness of visited websites, and the factor of community, which indicates that the level of customer activity in the web sites is related significantly to the customers' purchase intentions.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.81
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• pp.272-298
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• 2017

This study aims at understanding Korean fans who are also one of the most inquisitive consumers of the Korean pop products. For this purpose, it examines how Korean fandom perceives the procedures of the K-pop's globalization and constructs different perspectives of foreign fans. Firstly, it examines Korean fandom's the national pride as the K-pop expands to the global markets. Secondly, it explores how the Korean fandom rationalizes its possessive instinct while the global fans and markets becomes increasingly important. Finally, it explores how the Korean fandom constructs the different perceptions on foreign fans. In order to observe korean fans' thoughts and activities, it participates in the interactions in the tweeters and an online community. The Korean fans' perspective reflects both on individual tastes and the social dimensions in which fans live through. Through the lens of the Korean fandom, this study attempts to explicate the Korean fans' perception on foreign fans, which reflects another dimension of the K-pop's globalization.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.63-82
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• 2009

Virtual community is a social aggregation to attain some goals in an IT-supported virtual space (Lee et al., 2002). As lots of virtual communities generate robust and reliable outputs with low control and low incentive, previous researchers was interested in the questions, "why do they participate?" or "how are they controlled?". But. as Katz (1964) said, the most important part of the high-performing organization is the behaviors of members in the organization. Therefore, this research is to examine the relationship between the performance and the behaviors of participants in the virtual community. First, we propose 6 types of behaviors related to high performance in the virtual community: 'Continuous Attendance', 'Complying with the organizational value, policies, and regulations', 'Protection', 'Suggestion for the improving', 'Self-training', and 'Favorable behavior'. The six types of behaviors are extracted from the framework of Katz (1964) and Brief and Motowidlo (1986). The reason why each behavior is positively related with high-performance is that those who continuously attend have more responsibility than temporary participants do; complying with the rules of a virtual community means that they may make more reliable outcome; 'Protection' is one of the prosocial-behaviors and those who protect the community may concern the benefit of the virtual community when they participate: those who suggest some ideas for improvement may contribute to the virtual community; 'Self-training' behavior means that participants really want to have high quality in their contribution: those who have 'Favorable attitude' consider other members in the virtual community when they participate. Then, we perform an empirical analysis with the survey from participants in the Knowledge service of Naver.com, to show those behaviors are associated with the high-performance. To make the measurement for the six behaviors, we use CVR (content validity ratio) method (Lawshe, 1975), interviewing 12 experts. The dependent variable, performance of participation, is measured by 'ratio of selected answer' given by the Naver.com. We use email survey. We sent 1200 emails to randomly selected participants in the knowledge service and received 282 responses. The results of our empirical analysis show that 4('Continuous Attendance', 'Suggestion for the improving', 'Self-training', 'Favorable attitude') are positively related to the performance, but 2('Complying with the organizational value, policies, and regulations' and 'Protection') are not significant. In line with Fitzgerald (2006), we expect that participants in the virtual community may behave similarly to employees in the off-line firms for the high performance. But 2 behaviors have different results. The reason that the 'Complying with the organizational value' behavior is not sufficiently related to performance is that the motivation of participants is more related to intrinsic pleasure or altruism than external reward. Also, the 'Protection' behavior has no significant relationship with performance, which means that the high-performing participants have little concern about the problems in the community.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.53-74
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• 2012

A challenge in fostering virtual communities is the continuous supply of knowledge, namely members' willingness to contribute knowledge to their communities. Previous research argues that giving away knowledge eventually causes the possessors of that knowledge to lose their unique value to others, benefiting all except the contributor. Furthermore, communication within virtual communities involves a large number of participants with different social backgrounds and perspectives. The establishment of mutual understanding to comprehend conversations and foster knowledge contribution in virtual communities is inevitably more difficult than face-to-face communication in a small group. In spite of these arguments, evidence suggests that individuals in virtual communities do engage in social behaviors such as knowledge contribution. It is important to understand why individuals provide their valuable knowledge to other community members without a guarantee of returns. In virtual communities, knowledge is inherently rooted in individual members' experiences and expertise. This personal nature of knowledge requires social interactions between virtual community members for knowledge transfer. This study employs the social capital theory in order to account for interpersonal relationship factors and identity theory for individual and group factors that may affect knowledge contribution. First, social capital is the relationship capital which is embedded within the relationships among the participants in a network and available for use when it is needed. Social capital is a productive resource, facilitating individuals' actions for attainment. Nahapiet and Ghoshal (1997) identify three dimensions of social capital and explain theoretically how these dimensions affect the exchange of knowledge. Thus, social capital would be relevant to knowledge contribution in virtual communities. Second, existing research has addressed the importance of identity in facilitating knowledge contribution in a virtual context. Identity in virtual communities has been described as playing a vital role in the establishment of personal reputations and in the recognition of others. For instance, reputation systems that rate participants in terms of the quality of their contributions provide a readily available inventory of experts to knowledge seekers. Despite the growing interest in identities, however, there is little empirical research about how identities in the communities influence knowledge contribution. Therefore, the goal of this study is to better understand knowledge contribution by examining the roles of social capital and identity in virtual communities. Based on a theoretical framework of social capital and identity theory, we develop and test a theoretical model and evaluate our hypotheses. Specifically, we propose three variables such as cohesiveness, reciprocity, and commitment, referring to the social capital theory, as antecedents of knowledge contribution in virtual communities. We further posit that members with a strong identity (self-presentation and group identification) contribute more knowledge to virtual communities. We conducted a field study in order to validate our research model. We collected data from 192 members of virtual communities and used the PLS method to analyse the data. The tests of the measurement model confirm that our data set has appropriate discriminant and convergent validity. The results of testing the structural model show that cohesion, reciprocity, and self-presentation significantly influence knowledge contribution, while commitment and group identification do not significantly influence knowledge contribution. Our findings on cohesion and reciprocity are consistent with the previous literature. Contrary to our expectations, commitment did not significantly affect knowledge contribution in virtual communities. This result may be due to the fact that knowledge contribution was voluntary in the virtual communities in our sample. Another plausible explanation for this result may be the self-selection bias for the survey respondents, who are more likely to contribute their knowledge to virtual communities. The relationship between self-presentation and knowledge contribution was found to be significant in virtual communities, supporting the results of prior literature. Group identification did not significantly affect knowledge contribution in this study, inconsistent with the wealth of research that identifies group identification as an important factor for knowledge sharing. This conflicting result calls for future research that examines the role of group identification in knowledge contribution in virtual communities. This study makes a contribution to theory development in the area of knowledge management in general and virtual communities in particular. For practice, the results of this study identify the circumstances under which individual factors would be effective for motivating knowledge contribution to virtual communities.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.81-113
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• 2011

This study investigates leisure activity, involvement and self-concept in cyberspace of various age groups of adolescents. A total of 1,388 students (elementary school=337, middle school=326, high school=361, university=364, consisting of 696 male and 692 female) participated in the study. The results are as follows. First, although the vast majority of adolescents (96.9%) had a computer at home, majority of adolescents visited Internet cafe. Second, 70.3% of adolescents visited Internet cafe to play Internet games, followed by engaging in information search, chatting, and participated in cyber community. Third, on average adolescents spent 5.43 hours per week playing Internet games, with more males playing Internet games than female adolescents. As for information search, the weekly average was 2.60 hours, with university students spending more time than the other groups. As for chatting, the weekly average was 1.69 hours, with no significant differences among the groups. The weekly average of Internet use was 9.65 hours, with older groups spending more time. The weekly average use of computer was 10.91 hours, with older groups spending more time and more males using more computer than females. Fourth, as for self-concept in cyberspace, elementary and middle school students reported that they had fun, while high school and university students reported that they were the same as in the regular daily life. In addition, adolescents reported that they spent leisure activity in cyberspace and they become a fictional character in cyberspace. Fifth, when they played Internet games, regardless of age and gender, adolescents reported that they had fun, followed by that they were absorbed, that they became aggressive, and that they were the same as in the regular daily life. Sixth, when they chatted on Internet, regardless of age and gender, adolescents reported that they had fun, followed by that they were not interested, that they were the same as in the regular daily life, and that they do not chat on Internet. Seventh, when they interacted with their friends on Internet, regardless of age and gender, majority of adolescents reported that they had fun, followed by that they conversed, that they were the same as in the regular daily life, and that they felt closer. These results indicate that Korean adolescents view Internet as a place to spend their leisure time and that they enjoyed spending time on Internet.