• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.1-29
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• 2007

The brand-based online community recently plays an important roles for consumers to facilitates searching and sharing information among them. Firms often find such a brand community as a critical channel to gain collective intelligence for developing new ideas and products. As a new web platform such as web 2.0 has been introduced, consumers could more easily participate in the new social networks created by sharing mutual value and belief among themselves. Accordingly firms began to recognize potentials of online brand assets and pay attention to the importance of online brand community loyalty. Previous research related to online community tends to focus on identifying the antecedents of community loyalty and their subsequent impacts on brand. They, however, tend to neglect the importance of individual characteristics of online community users. As integrating the fragmented variables with an individual characteristics, therefore, this study reexamined the impacts of interactivity, information, reward, and personalization services provided by an online brand community on the sense of community, community loyalty, and brand attitude. Also, this study investigated how users' individual characteristics(need for cognition: NFC) can play moderating roles among the variables identified in the previous research. A field survey was administrated and 671 valid samples were collected. In order to test the hypothesis we conducted the multi-sample structural equation modeling(MSEM) between two groups(a group with high vs. a group with low level of NFC). Results show that previously identified variables such as interactivity, information, reward, and personalization services have significant effects on the sense of community as previous research demonstrated. Subsequently, the sense of community positively influences the community loyalty and brand attitude. However, when considering the NFC as a moderating variable, we found that the effect of interactivity and reward service on the sense of community was stronger for a group with a lower level of NFC compared to a group with a higher level, while the effect of information providing service on the sense of community was stronger for a group with a higher level of NFC compared to a group with a lower level. This research revealed that NFC can affect the degree of individual perception on the sense of community which has been considered as an important indicator for the community loyalty and brand attitude. Hence, when firms developing customer relation strategy through building an online brand community, they need to reflect customers' NFC and accordingly provide varying degree of interactivity, information, reward, and personalization services.

• 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.42
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• pp.140-167
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• 2008

This study analyzes the legal reasoning of Seoul Central District Court, which imposed legal liability on portals for posting defamatory user replies to news articles, written and provided by the news media, onto their 'News Windows'. Saddling portals with the burden of verifying the facts associated in news articles and imposing the legal obligation as a publisher entail a grave risk of impairment of free flow of information and freedom of expression. Of course, it would ultimately result in tightening up private censorship of information which the Constitution does not allow, and funker keep portals from posting even news articles in which expressed views and opinions are lawful. When judging whether portals should assume liability fur libelous user replies to news articles, it is necessary to distinguish the territory under the direct authority of portals from cafes and bulletin boards managed by third parties. In addition, imposing legal liability above the level of common carrier should be limited to the cases; when portals arbitrarily change the contents of news articles or when the articles portals changed contain libelous contents. Even if those conditions are met, the altered contents should obviously constitute libel. Only in the presence of proof that portals knew the illegality of news articles and did not take proper steps including deleting those replies, should portals not be considered as an accomplice. Nor should portals take responsibility for users' defamatory replies for those reasons.

• 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.

• Korean Journal of Childcare and Education
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.145-167
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• 2012

The objective of this study is to investigate the meaning of pre-service educare teachers' experience about child safety management classes based on Problem Based Learning (PBL). The participants in this study were thirty five sophomores majoring in Social Welfare, and fifteen weeks of data were collected. The participants were given five problems that were related with real situations. During the given period, they made documents from reflective journals, group or individual interviews, and online community resources. Analyzing the documents sheds light on the meaning of the pre-service educare teachers' experience. The results are as follows: First, pre-service educare teachers found themselves recovering confidence, earning recognitions from others, and pursuing their study. Second, they showed continuous conflicts not only with the PBL approach but also with themselves and group members. Finally, they experienced mutual help and interactions among the group members thorough their cooperative learning and they realized the meaning of cooperative learning by means of comparisons and references between the groups. In conclusion, this study confirms the applicability of PBL to the educare teacher training courses and points out specific ways to alleviate the conflicts in applying PBL to class needs in future studies.

• Journal of the Korean BIBLIA Society for library and Information Science
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.63-84
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• 2016

This study aimed to investigate the extent that users participated in Facebook of U.S. state archives and the types of user responses to posts on the Facebook. For the purpose, data created between August 1st and September 30th in 2016 were collected from Facebook continuously operated by 27 state archives. The extent of user participation was measured based on the number of user comments, the number of unique commenters, and the average number of comments per post. According to the measures, top 10 Facebook of state archives were selected. Out of these, Facebook of Ohio (1st), Florida (5th) and Arkansas (10th) state archives were chosen to collect 687 user comments and 132 posts. The analysis showed that comments regarding users' emotional opinion and judgement, adding explanations to a post, and sharing personal stories occupied a large portion. Interactions among users or between a user and an archivist were also identified. With regard to posts, those for sharing information/knowledge of records held in archives were identified as a high percentage. The study suggested that archives should collect and present historical information and related records connected to users' lives, examine methods for effective communication with users via social media and facilitate publicity and outreach services of archives based on shaping and maintaining online user community through social media.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.117-144
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• 2008

Lots of virtual communities and online businesses presently derive their primary sources of revenues through advertising, but nevertheless are plagued with marginal profitability though they might possess a significant user base. In the light of the need for an efficacious business model, there have been recent insights of an online community in particular reaping profits through an innovative and lucrative revenue generation method that earns by selling digital items. There have been some obvious evidences (e.g., Cyworld, SecondLife, Habo Hotel, etc.) that online communities can be profitable through their unique business model of selling digital items. However, there is lack of understanding about the motivation of purchasing digital items. This study tries to identify the main motivators of digital item purchases based on social/individual identity theory and self-presentation theory. "Digital items", otherwise known as "virtual assets", may include online avatars, accessories for the avatars, decorative ornaments like furniture, digital wallpapers, skins, background music and virtual weapons used for Internet games. These digital items are employed by users for representation and articulation in the online space, especially to create and enhance their online profiles in web pages and games. Prices for digital items typically range from a few cents to a few dollars each. Based on the theoretical framework like social identity theory and self-presentation theory, we developed the research model and proposed seven hypotheses. An analysis of 225 members of Cyworld found that digital item purchase intention in virtual world is affected by both members' need for self-presentation and need for affiliation. We also found that the need for self-presentation is significantly increased by innovativeness of members, community group norm, and community involvement. We concluded that the need for self-presentation could be a key variable for profitable business model in online community service industry. However, neither individual self-efficacy nor the need for affiliation significantly influenced the need for self-presentation which triggers purchase intention of digital items. In term of the theoretical and practical contribution, this study can be a pioneering empirical research that investigates the purchase intention of digital items based on social identity theory and self-presentation theory in the online context. Also, the findings of our study are valuable and practical for practitioners in the market who wish to adopt or improve the business model of selling digital items in an online community. From the findings, it can be seen that innovativeness of users, community group norm, and community involvement are three significant factors that influence need for self-presentation of users which ultimately leads to their intentions to buy digital items. These findings put forth that virtual community providers and online businesses selling digital items should prioritize their efforts and focus on these three factors if they want to increase the sales of these digital items and generate greater revenues. This study provides important implications for academic researchers and practitioners to understand why the community members pay money for their digital items in virtual world and how the practitioners can increase the sales of digital items in an online community. A couple of limitations of the study and future research directions are also discussed.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.19 no.11
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• pp.182-190
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• 2018

Many pharmaceutical companies operate the SFA system to support salespeople. The SFA system is used for various behaviors of salespeople. However, there is a lack of empirical analysis on the performance of SFA in Korea. The purpose of this study is to investigate the utilization of SFA system and the non - financial performance of SFA system. The subjects of the survey were 347 pharmaceutical community members who consisted of pharmaceutical salespeople and surveyed online for 18 days from March 13, 2018 to April 30, 2018. and the effective response rate was 23.1% (80/347). The analysis shows that the higher the level of SFA system utilization, the higher the non - financial performance. By type of company, the utilization level of multinational companies was higher than that of domestic companies. Among the SFA utilization level items, 1.47 points (3.65, 2.18) were higher than the domestic companies in terms of the support service items. Among the SFA performance items, foreign companies were 1.47 points (3.16, 1.69) Respectively. This suggests that the SFA development and operation method of the domestic company focuses on the management service rather than the support service for the salesperson and the customer satisfaction. Through this study, it is considered that domestic companies should strengthen sales person support and customer satisfaction information providing function when operating SFA system.

• Journal of Korean Library and Information Science Society
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• v.51 no.4
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• pp.101-119
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• 2020

The study aims to understand major topics and concerns of gender identity-related questions expressed by the users of the NAVER social Q&A site. To achieve this goal, we analyzed 2,120 questions created from 2010 to 2018 using natural language- and information retrieval-based methods. Results indicated that the major topics discussed by the users include interpersonal relationships, doubts about gender identity, sexual orientation, feelings and relationships, and concerns about gender identity. In addition, users mainly expressed concerns regarding general issues of gender identity; sexual orientation; negative cognition about gender identity; confession, coming-out, homosexuality; future, heterosexual relationships, military enlistment; and causes of gender identity confusion. The present study effectively derives information needs from real-world concerns about sexual identity by employing topic modeling techniques, and by comparing the advantages of exact match and tf-idf-based information retrieval methods extends methodology of Library and Information Science. Further, it has contributed to the academic maturity of the study of information behavior by observing the information needs or information-seeking behaviors of online community users with specific interests.

• Journal of Korea Entertainment Industry Association
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• v.15 no.7
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• pp.1-15
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• 2021

With the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic situation, the attention on Metaverse has been soared throughout media and publications. Recently the entertainment industry is also changing to actively utilize the virtual world with artists working through Metaverse platforms. With the recent high interests on Metaverse, this study attempts to illuminate how the public perceives and accepts Metaverse experiences. While research on Metaverse has been mainly focused on specific technologies or technical objects, this study focuses on exploring how fans recognize and understand the concept of Metaverse through newly debuted idol group 'aespa', composing of 4 human members and 4 AI avatar members that integrate real and virtual world. For this, this study seeks to analyze the reaction and recognition of fans by exploring online community 'DC Inside'. As a result of analyzing the reactions of fans in the early days of aespa's debut, the perspectives of understanding AI members of aespa are categorized into three groups: first, the type of equating and accepting the real and the virtual world; second, the type of recognizing the real world and the virtual world separately and recognizing the virtual member as an avatar or concept, not a genuine member; and finally, a type of recognizing virtual worlds separately from reality. Based on these results, the implications that Metaverse contents may have in the entertainment industry are suggested.