• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.75-94
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• 2011

In this paper, we explore the information diffusion mechanism under social network environments by investigating the effect of message characteristics on the volume and speed of retweeting in Twitter, a popular online social media service. To this end, we select eight main keywords (i.e., '무상급식', '반값등록금', '나가수', '평창', '김연아', '박태환', '아이폰', '갤럭시') that have been popular on online social media in recent days. Each keyword represents various social aspects of Korea that recently grab people's attention such as political issues, entertainment, sports celebrities, and the latest digital products, and eventually holds distinctive message characteristics. Analyzing the frequency and velocity of retweeting for each keyword, we find that more than half of the sample messages posted on Twitter contain personal opinions for the certain keyword, but we also find that the tweets which include objective messages with hyperlink are the fastest ones when being retweeted by other followers. In overall, when being retweeted, the group of messages related to the certain keyword present distinctive diffusion patterns and speed according to message characteristics. From academic perspective, the findings in the study broaden our theoretical knowledge of information diffusion mechanism over online social media. For practitioners, the results also provide managerial implications regarding how to strategically utilize online social media for marketing communications with customers.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.5-22
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• 2007

This research is focused on the effects of salesmen's service-justice and using the IT devices on customer response. Specially, I want to know for the response when our customer take the service from the salesmen. From analysis of the resulting data, using the IT devices are increased the quality of salesmen's service-justice. Salesmen's distributive-justice affects to positive the relationship quality. But procedural justice and interactional justice cannot affect to positive the relationship quality. Maybe, I think that the reason will be a feature of insurance goods. And relationship quality affect to positive the customer's response. There are limitations on generalization due to the results based on only insurance industry, but this study will be a useful exploratory step before designing a future survey.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.22
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• pp.85-115
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• 2007

Following is discovered in this study by some. First, attribute(product/non- product) of that truth that get through experiment of this study is WOM deduced result that have statistical meaning in dependent variable which is public trust only in this study. Specially, information by word of mouth type received High positive response more with non-product information by word of mouth attribute than the product attribute in all experiment products that is parted according to involvement. Consumer's response by involvement level of product can affect for site attitude, public trust, and intention to purchase by second. For example, consumer's site attitude has induced the most positive response, and can confirm positive response of High consumer most in that involvement sensitivity product in that participation reason type product and could confirm response that is the most positive in that involvement reason product even if there is for intention to purchase. Result of this study is grasped that have High mean value relatively in site attitude, product attitude, information by word of mouth effect, public trust, brand attitude, purchase intention etc. generally that product involvement and information by word of mouth attribute are interrelation by third. This can change fairly data processing process according to consumer's Involvement Level, behavior deterministic process, consumer's action with attitude formation process, and involvement for products. High occasion than is low incline more efforts in information retrieval and is discreet result such as study finding of produce.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.65-96
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• 2012

Brand has received much attention from considerable marketing research. When consumers consume product or services, they are exposed to a lot of brand related stimuli. These contain brand personality, brand experience, brand identity, brand communications and so on. A special kind of new crisis occasionally confronting companies' brand management today is the brand related rumor. An important influence on consumers' purchase decision making is the word-of-mouth spread by other consumers and most decisions are influenced by other's recommendations. In light of this influence, firms have reasonable reason to study and understand consumer-to-consumer communication such as brand rumor. The importance of brand rumor to marketers is increasing as the number of internet user and SNS(social network service) site grows. Due to the development of internet technology, people can spread rumors without the limitation of time, space and place. However relatively few studies have been published in marketing journals and little is known about brand rumors in the marketplace. The study of rumor has a long history in all major social science. But very few studies have dealt with the antecedents and consequences of any kind of brand rumor. Rumor has been generally described as a story or statement in general circulation without proper confirmation or certainty as to fact. And it also can be defined as an unconfirmed proposition, passed along from people to people. Rosnow(1991) claimed that rumors were transmitted because people needed to explain ambiguous and uncertain events and talking about them reduced associated anxiety. Especially negative rumors are believed to have the potential to devastate a company's reputation and relations with customers. From the perspective of marketer, negative rumors are considered harmful and extremely difficult to control in general. It is becoming a threat to a company's sustainability and sometimes leads to negative brand image and loss of customers. Thus there is a growing concern that these negative rumors can damage brands' reputations and lead them to financial disaster too. In this study we aimed to distinguish antecedents of brand rumor transmission and investigate the effects of brand rumor characteristics on rumor spread intention. We also found key components in personal acceptance of brand rumor. In contextualist perspective, we tried to unify the traditional psychological and sociological views. In this unified research approach we defined brand rumor's characteristics based on five major variables that had been found to influence the process of rumor spread intention. The five factors of usefulness, source credibility, message credibility, worry, and vividness, encompass multi level elements of brand rumor. We also selected product involvement as a control variable. To perform the empirical research, imaginary Korean 'Kimch' brand and related contamination rumor was created and proposed. Questionnaires were collected from 178 Korean samples. Data were collected from college students who have been experienced the focal product. College students were regarded as good subjects because they have a tendency to express their opinions in detail. PLS(partial least square) method was adopted to analyze the relations between variables in the equation model. The most widely adopted causal modeling method is LISREL. However it is poorly suited to deal with relatively small data samples and can yield not proper solutions in some cases. PLS has been developed to avoid some of these limitations and provide more reliable results. To test the reliability using SPSS 16 s/w, Cronbach alpha was examined and all the values were appropriate showing alpha values between .802 and .953. Subsequently, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted successfully. And structural equation modeling has been used to analyze the research model using smartPLS(ver. 2.0) s/w. Overall, R² of adoption of rumor is .476 and R² of intention of rumor transmission is .218. The overall model showed a satisfactory fit. The empirical results can be summarized as follows. According to the results, the variables of brand rumor characteristic such as source credibility, message credibility, worry, and vividness affect argument strength of rumor. And argument strength of rumor also affects rumor intention. On the other hand, the relationship between perceived usefulness and argument strength of rumor is not significant. The moderating effect of product involvement on the relations between argument strength of rumor and rumor W.O.M intention is not supported neither. Consequently this study suggests some managerial and academic implications. We consider some implications for corporate crisis management planning, PR and brand management. This results show marketers that rumor is a critical factor for managing strong brand assets. Also for researchers, brand rumor should become an important thesis of their interests to understand the relationship between consumer and brand. Recently many brand managers and marketers have focused on the short-term view. They just focused on strengthen the positive brand image. According to this study we suggested that effective brand management requires managing negative brand rumors with a long-term view of marketing decisions.