• Journal of Families and Better Life
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• v.24 no.3 s.81
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• pp.27-41
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• 2006

The purpose of this study is to investigate the general tendencies and casual relations of demographic variables, consumer alienation, materialism and impulse buying among college students. Three hundred and forty one undergraduate students in Daejeon were participated in this study. Factor analysis, Multiple regression and Path analysis were used as statistical analysis. The major findings are as follows: 1. Consumer alienation of college students was divided into 4 types such as Powerlessness, Meaningless, Normlessness, Cultural Estrangement. The overall level of consumer alienation was 3.36. Normlessness(M=3.70) was the highest, and the lowest was powerlessness(M=2.82). Consumer alienation was influenced by gender, age, subjective level of living. Specifically, the lower the age and the subjective level of living were the higher meaningless and powerlessness respectively. And cultural estrangement was higher in male than female. However, normlessness was not affected by demographic variables. 2. The level of materialism of college students was relatively high(M=3.71). The materialism was affected by gender, age, allowance adequacy. 3. The level of impulse buying was higher than middle point(M=3.29). The results of path analysis showed that gender, age, allowance, allowance adequacy, socio-economic status, subjective level of living, powerlessness, materialism influence on impulse buying direct and indirect.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.407-427
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• 2004

The rapid innovation of information and communication technology and its sharp falling prices have brought about the expansion of the Internet, integrating the world as one space under converged space and time. This rapid expansion of the Internet and its application in the economy have spurred the emergence of the digital economy. The Internet has influenced strongly on the changes of not only economic activities but also political, social and cultural activities. In this context, a rapidly increasing Internet expansion renders the rhetoric about the death of distance and about the meaningless of geographical place. However, the development and expansion of Internet induces a growing digital divide among nations and also a spatial inequality in a nation as the supply of the Internet has concentrated towards demand-affluent large cities. A large gap of digital access has been occurred between high income and low income countries according to a measurement of the international digital access index. In a national level, the Internet backbone has been built around large cities which favor a large amount of the Internet demand, and the affordable accessibility of these cities for the Internet services has influenced strongly on the agglomeration of Internet related industries, further inducing the construction and investment of the Internet backbone into large cities as cumulative causation effects. As a result, the expansion of the Internet affects immensely on the changes of spatial structure in a nation resulting in the new spatial phenomena such as centralization, concentration and splintering in the digitalized space-economy.