• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.1-14
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• 2024

Virtual influencers, who are emerging as new players in digital marketing, impact consumers' purchase intentions. They promote positive perceptions and mimetic consumption of specific brands or products through interactions with followers. Therefore, this study aims to examine the effect of the characteristics of virtual influencers on the purchase intention for fashion products through the consumers' mimetic desire. As characteristics of virtual influencers, five factors were set: reality, attractiveness, professionalism, trustworthiness, and curiosity. Data for analysis were collected through an online questionnaire from the 8th to the 15th of August 2023, and 268 data points in total were analyzed using SPSS and Process Macro 4.3. The results of the study showed that the characteristics of virtual influencers all positively affected mimetic desire and purchase intention for fashion products. Moreover, it was found that mimetic desire has a mediating effect between the five characteristics of virtual influencers and the purchase intention for fashion products. Mimetic desire fully mediates the relationship between reality and the intention to purchase fashion products, and partially mediates the relationship between attractiveness, professionalism, trustworthiness, and curiosity and the purchase intention for fashion products. These findings further enhance the understanding of the relationship between virtual influencers and consumer behavior and identify the relationship between virtual influencers, mimetic desire, and fashion product purchase intentions. Consequently, leveraging virtual influencers strategically in digital marketing, the fashion industry can amplify positive brand perceptions, drive consumer engagement, and ultimately foster increased purchase intent.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.205-227
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• 2023

Recently, Virtual Human(VH) has begun to appear in various media, not only on social media, but also in advertisements, music sources, and dramas. Virtual human has become a primary marketing tool for companies, but there also exist concerns when the companies do not disclose the identities of virtual humans. Accordingly, it is necessary to examine users' responses toward content that features virtual humans. This study aimed to examine how the exposure of virtual humans in the content affects users' perceptions. Therefore, the study defined the concept of 'VH Disclosure(VHD)', referring to the exposure of the virtual human's identity, and explored the impact of VH disclosure on attitude toward the ad (Hedonism, Utilitarianism, and Interestingness) and source credibility (Trustworthiness and Expertise). The study conducted an experimental survey with 302 respondents. Regardless of when the ad featured a VH or a human, the results showed that there was no significant difference between users' attitudes and source credibility. The results revealed that it was more effective to disclose the VH in social media feeds than directly reveal the VH's identity in the content. Therefore, this study utilizes a new concept of 'VH Disclosure(VHD)' to enhance the understanding of VH and contributes to establishing marketing strategies optimized for consumers in the creation of virtual human-related content.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.81-97
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• 2022

This paper's purpose is to get hold of the recent research trend by analyzing the variables uesd in startups related papers. The startups related papers in this paper are the papers which include 'startups' in the title of the registered papers from the year 2013 to the year 2020. This study's analysis methods are text-mining of all variables and text-network analysis of affected variables. Visualizing tool for network analysis is Gephi. The result of variables' analysis is as follows. First, independent variables consist mainly of variables about startups' internal factors and outside environment, but due to startups' features like early stage company's features, innovative features, most of variables are about enterprise internal competitiveness, marketing 4P strategy, entrepreneurship, coopreation method, transformational leadership, enterprise features, lean startup strategy, enterprise internal communication, value orientation, task conflict, relationship conflict, knowledge sharing, etc. Second, dependent variables are mainly about outcome, and are classified into financial performance and non-financial performance by overall concept. In other words, startups related papers have higher interest in non-financial performance, like management performance, team performance, SCM performance as well as financial performance like sales quantity owing to startups' immaturity in getting good financial performance. Through this study we can find out as follows. Although there are not many officially registered papers dealing with startups, those papers include various themes about stratups. For example, there are trendy themes like lean startups strategy, crowdfunding, influencer and accelerator, etc.