• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.147-165
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• 2009

Virtual community(VC) will increasingly be organized as commercial enterprises, with the objective of earning an attractive financial return by providing members with valuable resources and environment. For example, Cyworld.com in Korea uses several community services to enable customers of Cyworld to take control of their own value as potential purchasers of products and services. Although initial adoption is important for online network service success, it does not necessarily result in the desired managerial performance unless the initial usage is continuously related to the continuous usage and purchase. Particularly, the customer who receives relevant online services and is well equipped with online network services, will trust the online service provider and perceive less risk and experience more activities such as continuous usage and purchase. Thus, how to promote continued online service usage or, alternatively, how to prevent discontinuance is a critical issue for VC service providers to consider. By aggregating a wide range of information and online environments for customers and providing trust to its members, the service providers of virtual communities help to reduce the perceived risk of continuous usage and purchase. Drill down, online service managers realize that achieving strong and sustained customers who continuously use online service and purchase on it is crucial. Therefore, the research into this online service continuance will identify the relationship between the initial usage and the continuous usage and purchase. The research of continuous usage or post adoption has recently emerged as an important issue in the IS literature. Individuals' information systems(IS) continuous usage decisions are congruent with consumers' repeat purchase decisions. The TAM(Technology Acceptance Model) paradigm has been strongly confirmed across a wide range from product purchase on EC to online service usage contexts. The analysis of IS usage based on TAM has proven to be successful across almost online service contexts. However, most of previous studies have focused on only an area (i.e., VC or EC). Just little research has tried to analyze the relationship between VC and EC. The effect of some factors on user intention, captured through several theories such as TAM, has been demonstrated. Yet, few studies have explored the salient relationships of VC users' EC acceptance. To fill this gap between VC and EC research, this paper attempts to develop a research model that extends the TAM perspective in view of the additional contributions of trust in the service provider and trust in members on some factors that affect EC and VC adoption. In this extension, we applied the TAM-to-TAM(T2T) model, and analyzed the transfer effect of trust between these two TAMs. The research model was empirically tested on the context of a social network service. The model was to extend TAM with the trust concept for the virtual community environment from the perspective of tasks. By building an extended model of TAM and examining the relationships between trust and the existing variables of TAM, it is aimed to explain a user's continuous intention to use VC and purchase on EC. The unit of analysis in this paper is an individual user of a virtual community. The population of interest is the individual with the experiences in virtual community. The data for this paper was made available via a Web survey of VC users. In total, 281 cases were gathered for about one week, but there were some missing values in the sample and there were some inappropriate cases. Thus, only 248 cases were finally analyzed. We chose the structural equation analysis to test the hypotheses and it is better suited for explaining complex relationships than the other methods. In this test, AMOS was used to test the Structural Equation Model (SEM). Noticeable results have been found in the T2T model regarding the factors affecting the intention to use of virtual community and loyalty. Our result showed that trust transfer plays a key role in forming the two adoption beliefs. Overall, this study preliminarily confirms the salience of trust transfer in online service.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.10 no.10
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• pp.45-57
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• 2012

Purpose - This study was conducted to evaluate service quality, perceived value, and satisfaction in the performing arts in order to establish a system of relationships that predicts repurchase intention, which increasingly needs to be studied as the domestic performing arts market grows. Research design, data, and methodology - Another purpose of this study is to identify 'work-related factors' and 'performing-arts-related factors' in the performing arts industry, and to observe the influence of the core SQ factors expected to influence audiences' purchase intentions through perceived value and customer satisfaction. The empirical study to test the hypothesis was based on a review of the literature and employed the survey method; data were collected from a total of 500 audience members. Results - The major results of the analysis are as follows. First, in terms of quality factors affecting perceived value, literary quality, level, professionalism, and musical quality were shown to have a significant influence as key factors from the performing arts perspective, while reliability, convenience, and related costs were indicated to exert a significant influence as additional factors related to work. Secondly, the quality factors with a significant influence on customer satisfaction were literary quality, professionalism, and musical quality, which were shown to have a significant influence from the performing arts perspective, while only reliability was indicated to exert a significant influence on work-related factors. Third, perceived value was shown to have a strong positive (+) influence on customer satisfaction, with both perceived value and customer satisfaction exerting a significant influence on the revisit intention. Finally, according to the results a difference analysis with demographic variables, viewing variables as moderating variables, differences according to gender were indicated in the influence of literary value and lel on perceived value, and in the influence of convenience and professionalism on customer satisfaction as well. Also, in terms of the influence of perceived value on customer satisfaction, males were found to be more influenced than females. Conclusions - Based on the above results, the suggested implications of the present study are as follows. First, through the consideration of not only the crucial work perspective in performing arts services, which has been inadequate in the past, but the additional performance-related level, the previously unevenly distributed viewpoints were expanded for application. Second, in verifying the relationship between expanded quality factors and the factors that determine consumer behavior while simultaneously considering key factors and additional related factors, work-related service quality factors were shown to exert a stronger influence on perceived value and customer satisfaction than performance-related factors. Third, for service factors related to performance, the reliability factor exerts an influence on perceived value and customer satisfaction, requiring that a performance planner secure and manage diverse channels to immediately support customer requests in providing performance theater services.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.103-128
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• 2013

When a consumer needs a product or service and multiple sellers are available online, the process of selecting a seller to buy online from is complex since the process involves many behavioral dimensions that have to be taken into account. As a part of this selection process, consumers may set minimum trust expectation that can be used to screen out less trustworthy sellers. In the previous research, the level of consumers' trust expectation has been anchored on two important factors: product involvement and perceived risk. Product involvement refers to the extent to which a consumer perceives a specific product important. Thus, the higher product involvement may result in the higher trust expectation in sellers. On the other hand, other related studies found that when consumers perceived a higher level of risk (e.g., credit card fraud risk), they set higher trust expectation as well. While abundant research exists addressing the relationship between product involvement and perceived risk, little attention has been paid to the integrative view of the link between the two constructs and their impacts on the trust expectation. The present paper is a step toward filling this research gap. The purpose of this paper is to understand the process by which a consumer chooses an online merchant by examining the relationships among product involvement, perceived risk, trust expectation, and intention to buy from an e-tailer. We specifically focus on the mediating role of perceived risk in the relationships between enduring product involvement and the trust expectation. That is, we question whether product involvement affects the trust expectation directly without mediation or indirectly mediated by perceived risk. The research model with four hypotheses was initially tested using data gathered from 635 respondents through an online survey method. The structural equation modeling technique with partial least square was used to validate the instrument and the proposed model. The results showed that three out of the four hypotheses formulated were supported. First, we found that the intention to buy from a digital storefront is positively and significantly influenced by the trust expectation, providing support for H4 (trust expectation ${\rightarrow}$ purchase intention). Second, perceived risk was found to be a strong predictor of trust expectation, supporting H2 as well (perceived risk ${\rightarrow}$ trust expectation). Third, we did not find any evidence of direct influence of product involvement, which caused H3 to be rejected (product involvement ${\rightarrow}$ trust expectation). Finally, we found significant positive relationship between product involvement and perceived risk (H1: product involvement ${\rightarrow}$ perceived risk), which suggests that the possibility of complete mediation of perceived risk in the relationship between enduring product involvement and the trust expectation. As a result, we conducted an additional test for the mediation effect by comparing the original model with the revised model without the mediator variable of perceived risk. Indeed, we found that there exists a strong influence of product involvement on the trust expectation (by intentionally eliminating the variable of perceived risk) that was suppressed (i.e., mediated) by the perceived risk in the original model. The Sobel test statistically confirmed the complete mediation effect. Results of this study offer the following key findings. First, enduring product involvement is positively related to perceived risk, implying that the higher a consumer is enduringly involved with a given product, the greater risk he or she is likely to perceive with regards to the online purchase of the product. Second, perceived risk is positively related to trust expectation. A consumer with great risk perceptions concerning the online purchase is likely to buy from a highly trustworthy online merchant, thereby mitigating potential risks. Finally, product involvement was found to have no direct influence on trust expectation, but the relationship between the two constructs was indirect and mediated by the perceived risk. This is perhaps an important theoretical integration of two separate streams of literature on product involvement and perceived risk. The present research also provides useful implications for practitioners as well as academicians. First, one implication for practicing managers in online retail stores is that they should invest in reducing the perceived risk of consumers in order to lower down the trust expectation and thus increasing the consumer's intention to purchase products or services. Second, an academic implication is that perceived risk mediates the relationship between enduring product involvement and trust expectation. Further research is needed to elaborate the theoretical relationships among the constructs under consideration.

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.74-87
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• 2012

The service industry will be essentially extended during the economic growth and industrial development. Especially, the role of workers meeting the customers in service industry is very important from the view point of purchase intention. So many companies in service industry endeavor to increase the work efficacies of workers through the various prizes and incentives, and improve the job performance by additional education. Recently, the incentive tours are comprehensively accepted as an efficient tool to promote the loyalty and job performance of workers. The incentive tours enable the worker to gain the cultural experiences. They will experience not only the natural heritages and antiques, but also the local life culture and arts culture. The culture marketing for worker as the internal customer increase the worker's loyalty and the ties among workers, and therefore, their job performance will be increased. The empirical results (162 workers surveyed) showed the incentive tours have improved both the individual and group's job performance at a cosmetic sales organization. So it is recommend to plan the organization specific incentive tour in order to improve the productivity of the service organization.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.44 no.4
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• pp.639-656
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• 2020

Consumers' shopping experience has recently expanded to mobile and social networks; in addition, online fashion retailers started to focus on real-time interaction services as an emerging marketing tool. This study explores the consumer' shopping experience based on social live streaming services (SLSS) to investigate consumer's response behavior and effects through perceived service quality. An online survey method was conducted and a total of 186 female consumer panels were collected. The results indicate that cognitive communion of co-experience had a significant effect on perceived SLSS service quality (responsiveness, contents informativeness, playfulness, system availability). Service quality of SLSS (responsiveness, contents informativeness, and playfulness) had significant effect on trust in SLSS seller while system availability had no significant effect. Also, trust in seller showed significant effect on purchase intention. Last, it was confirmed that the moderating effect of purchasing experience of SLSS was significant in the relationship between cognitive communion and responsiveness/playfulness. There was also an additional significant moderating effect of purchasing experience between system availability and trust in seller.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.7-29
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• 2012

Smartphone and its applications (i.e. apps) are increasingly penetrating consumer markets. According to a recent report from Korea Communications Commission, nearly 50% of mobile subscribers in South Korea are smartphone users that accounts for over 25 million people. In particular, the importance of smartphone has risen as a geospatially-aware device that provides various location-based services (LBS) equipped with GPS capability. The popular LBS include map and navigation, traffic and transportation updates, shopping and coupon services, and location-sensitive social network services. Overall, the emerging location-based smartphone apps (LBA) offer significant value by providing greater connectivity, personalization, and information and entertainment in a location-specific context. Conversely, the rapid growth of LBA and their benefits have been accompanied by concerns over the collection and dissemination of individual users' personal information through ongoing tracking of their location, identity, preferences, and social behaviors. The majority of LBA users tend to agree and consent to the LBA provider's terms and privacy policy on use of location data to get the immediate services. This tendency further increases the potential risks of unprotected exposure of personal information and serious invasion and breaches of individual privacy. To address the complex issues surrounding LBA particularly from the user's behavioral perspective, this study applied the privacy calculus model (PCM) to explore the factors that influence the adoption of LBA. According to PCM, consumers are engaged in a dynamic adjustment process in which privacy risks are weighted against benefits of information disclosure. Consistent with the principal notion of PCM, we investigated how individual users make a risk-benefit assessment under which personalized service and locatability act as benefit-side factors and information privacy risks act as a risk-side factor accompanying LBA adoption. In addition, we consider the moderating role of trust on the service providers in the prohibiting effects of privacy risks on user intention to adopt LBA. Further we include perceived ease of use and usefulness as additional constructs to examine whether the technology acceptance model (TAM) can be applied in the context of LBA adoption. The research model with ten (10) hypotheses was tested using data gathered from 98 respondents through a quasi-experimental survey method. During the survey, each participant was asked to navigate the website where the experimental simulation of a LBA allows the participant to purchase time-and-location sensitive discounted tickets for nearby stores. Structural equations modeling using partial least square validated the instrument and the proposed model. The results showed that six (6) out of ten (10) hypotheses were supported. On the subject of the core PCM, H2 (locatability ${\rightarrow}$ intention to use LBA) and H3 (privacy risks ${\rightarrow}$ intention to use LBA) were supported, while H1 (personalization ${\rightarrow}$ intention to use LBA) was not supported. Further, we could not any interaction effects (personalization X privacy risks, H4 & locatability X privacy risks, H5) on the intention to use LBA. In terms of privacy risks and trust, as mentioned above we found the significant negative influence from privacy risks on intention to use (H3), but positive influence from trust, which supported H6 (trust ${\rightarrow}$ intention to use LBA). The moderating effect of trust on the negative relationship between privacy risks and intention to use LBA was tested and confirmed by supporting H7 (privacy risks X trust ${\rightarrow}$ intention to use LBA). The two hypotheses regarding to the TAM, including H8 (perceived ease of use ${\rightarrow}$ perceived usefulness) and H9 (perceived ease of use ${\rightarrow}$ intention to use LBA) were supported; however, H10 (perceived effectiveness ${\rightarrow}$ intention to use LBA) was not supported. Results of this study offer the following key findings and implications. First the application of PCM was found to be a good analysis framework in the context of LBA adoption. Many of the hypotheses in the model were confirmed and the high value of $R^2$ (i.,e., 51%) indicated a good fit of the model. In particular, locatability and privacy risks are found to be the appropriate PCM-based antecedent variables. Second, the existence of moderating effect of trust on service provider suggests that the same marginal change in the level of privacy risks may differentially influence the intention to use LBA. That is, while the privacy risks increasingly become important social issues and will negatively influence the intention to use LBA, it is critical for LBA providers to build consumer trust and confidence to successfully mitigate this negative impact. Lastly, we could not find sufficient evidence that the intention to use LBA is influenced by perceived usefulness, which has been very well supported in most previous TAM research. This may suggest that more future research should examine the validity of applying TAM and further extend or modify it in the context of LBA or other similar smartphone apps.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.14 no.11
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• pp.129-138
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• 2016

Purpose - The ICT(information and communications technologies) development is affecting consumer behaviors on selecting channel or distribution system. This study aims to advance our knowledge about the factors influencing omni-channel behaviors. This study considers the positive brand experience as the moderating variable into the relationship between omini-channel use intention and consumer brand relation. Also, the effect of positive brand experience on consumer-brand relation is researched. Research design, data, and methodology - This study conducted an empirical test with the subject as customers who purchase goods or service through on-off cross channel simultaneously. The research model is developed from prior literatures about influencing variables on channel selection. The structure of this study is designed to identify causal relationships between the variables. 268 survey data from the questionnaire survey which is conducted to target customers who use online and offline channels, is used for empirical analysis. This study validates generality with descriptive statistics and data reliability with Cronbach's alpha value. The exploratory factor analysis is used for value purification. Then, the confirmatory factor analysis is conducted for structural equation modeling. Finally, the execute structural equation modeling is analyzed to confirm the hypotheses Results - First, the two causal influences between perceived performance risk and the propensity of omni-channel and between price consciousness and the propensity of omni-channel are verified through the empirical test. Second, the result identifies that the propensity of omni-channel is influenced on consumer-brand relationship. Third, the AMOS analysis proves that the moderating variable, positive brand experience, has significant positive impact on consumer-brand relationship. This significant relationship is highly supported by the regression analysis between brand experience and propensity of omni-channel because it results that positive brand experience has positive impact on the propensity of omni-channel. All hypotheses are verified to be true. Conclusions - Based on the empirical result, this study confirms that perceived performance risk and price consciousness are the important factors influencing propensity of omni-channel. According to the additional analysis, the moderating variable and positive brand experience plays important role between the propensity of omni-channel and consumer-brand relationship. Furthermore, positive brand experience influences more on consumer-brand relationship than non-positive brand experience.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.65-74
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• 2014

Due to recent interest in user experience and its significance, much research surrounding this theme is now being conducted. In this research, I investigated user experience during usage of a product and the satisfaction acquired by it, as well as the relationship between satisfaction of having used a product and whether the user would be more likely to purchase another product from the same company. The same experiment was conducted in South Korea and the United States of America in order to get more generalized experimental results. I found that amongst the six representative user emotions expressed while using a product, two of them correlated the most. First, 'Satisfaction in Usability' (the emotions aroused by satisfaction with usage or the practicality of the product); and second, 'Discomfort or Displeasure' (uncomfortable or unpleasant emotions expressed while using a product. The above two factors were found to be of the most influence concerning satisfaction of the product. Also 'Satisfaction in Usability' was found to be of the most influence in their preferability towards purchasing an item from the same company in the future. The significance of this finding is that aside from focussing on the attractiveness of the product's exteriors and design, one should be concerned on the ease of usage and effectiveness as well as usability of the product, all of which contribute to how efficiently a consumer will utilize the product. Furthermore, in agreement with previous research concerning the correlation between satisfaction of a product and positive perspective on consecutive purchases, the result of this study shows that the more satisfaction consumers feel after using a product, the more likely they are to purchase additional merchandises from the same company which manufactured the original product.

• Food Science and Preservation
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.579-589
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• 2009

We focused on the condition of washed, fresh ginseng in the market and analyzed consumer attitudes to the product to improve the consumption of fresh ginseng. A preference for fresh ginseng was high among every age class, and was particularly notable in older individuals. Fresh ginseng was usually eaten as ginseng chicken soup, mostly in summer and winter, and as a valuable health food, rather than because of desirable qualities of taste or smell. A total of 66.5% of those surveyed reported that they had purchased fresh ginseng, mostly from big discount stores. Such stores were preferred as outlets owing to a reputation for quality and shopper convenience (the stores were located near interviewees' homes). More than 70% of purchasers emphasized that they chose to purchase in department stores and traditional markets owing to the reputation for quality of such sources. Most consumers considered quality to be a prime element in purchase decisions. A total of 32.9% of those surveyed had bought washed fresh ginseng to give as a gift to a friend. Of those surveyed, 67.1% had never bought washed fresh ginseng. The following reasons were proposed to explain the preference for purchase of ginseng with attached soil. Most consumers (40.2%) thought the soil was a reflection of quality. Those who preferred washed fresh ginseng considered that the material was hygienic and convenient to store. When questioned about their intention to buy washed fresh ginseng, 55.0% of consumers replied in the affirmative and 17.1% in the negative. When consumers were asked whether they would be willing to pay an additional charge for the washing and packing of fresh ginseng, 58.8% answered in the affirmative.