Healing Effect of 'Creative Writing' on Individual and on Our Age - Focused on the 'Man of Darkness (Vampire)' Symbol - ('창조적 글쓰기'가 개인 및 시대에 미치는 치유적 작용 - '어둠의 남자(Vampire)' 상징을 중심으로 - )
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- Sim-seong Yeon-gu
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- v.28 no.1
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- pp.1-49
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- 2013
This article started with 'encounter'. Both authors met around the middle of February and discussed the subject for the inhospital conference presentation scheduled at the break of June. Having conversation like "Movies similar to fairytales heard from childhood are standing out conspicuously among commercial films which are attracting audiences and receiving fervent response these days. This phenomenon is marvelous and mysterious." together, and sharing this and that, the conversation turned naturally to 'Bram Stoker's Dracula', 'Series of Twilight', and 'Warm Bodies', both authors found out the fact that we saw these movies in common with propound impression. Feeling our hearts beating high, bit of fear and hesitation followed simultaneously at the moment when both of us encountered the idea to choose subject of conference presentation related to this and expressed one in words. While preparing for the conference, presenting to others, and having discussion with the audience, our hearts have been filled with Presentation was finished after active discussion beyond fixed hour and it also brought audience (among those present) to show strong emotional response both positively and negatively. At first, we just had a thought to put aside the content of presentation, but we felt lack of something else, lingering in our minds. We finally decided to accomplish our work into an article leading to submission, based on the advice and recommendation from one of the audience. This article is a small 'creative writing' born by sharing both authors' passion and enthusiasm. In the first part of this article, we have introduced the dream of 31-year-old woman's which led to the 'creative writing' and spotlighted her personal life, before and after the dream. In the second part, we have examined the consequence (way of realization) and meaning of creative impulse shown from or experienced from personal unconsciousness (dream, fantasy) together. Creative impulse shown from the individual appeared to bring creative transformation of individual personality through the process of 'introversion'. Otherwise it also appeared to be delivered as a masterpiece through 'creative writing' or from the process of 'extroversion'. Sometimes both consequences happened at once. We tried to examine and interpret the dream of 31-year-old woman's, which was introduced in the first part of this article, that is to say, the dream of 'Stephenie Meyer's, the author of the 'love between vampire boy and ordinary human girl' themed novel 'Twilight Series', in a psychoanalytic perspective. In the third part, highlighting individual dreams and three different movies 'Bram Stoker's Dracula', 'Twilight Series', and 'Warm Bodies', we found the transformation of symbol 'Man of Darkness, vampire' seen in each individual dreams and in some specific popular arts, such as novels and movies, receiving fervent response from people. We also found love between this symbol and humane woman, bearing fruit together with very impressive change shown in the attitude of 'Man of Darkness' (vampire)'s conscious ego and mutual relationship pattern. We contemplated this phenomenon, the reason why these events happen, and what kind of association presents among these events, individual, and this era and discussed the effects on individuals and this era, at present. 'Creative impulse', originated in the deep structure of human mind is realized as a 'transformation of individual personality' or masterpiece through artistic creation. If it has a chance to make a match with this era, shared by a lot of contemporary people, it also appears to bring positive effect as healing and salvation to each individual or to each era. From this article, we mainly highlighted positive and healing aspects of individual 'creative impulse'. We hope to deal with the negative consequences and their reason coming from 'creative impulse', if the occasion arises, in the future with a new article.
The study examines how the environmental factors of store influence service brand personality and repurchase intention in the service environment. The service industry has been experiencing the intensified competition with the industry's continuous growth and the influence from rapid technological advancement. Under the circumstances, it has become ever more important for the brand competitiveness to be distinctively recognized against competition. A brand needs to be distinguished and differentiated from competing companies because they are all engaged in the similar environment of the service industry. The differentiation of brand achievement has become increasingly important to highlight certain brand functions to include emotional, self-expressive, and symbolic functions since the importance of such functions has been further emphasized in promoting consumption activities. That is the recent role of brand personality that has been emphasized in the service industry. In other words, customers now freely and actively express their personalities or egos in consumption activities, taking an important role in construction of a brand asset. Hence, the study suggests that it is necessary to disperse the recognition and acknowledgement that the maintenance of the existing customers contributes more to boost repurchase intention when it is compared to the efforts to create new customers, particularly in the service industry. Meanwhile, the store itself can offer a unique environment that may influence the consumer's purchase decision. Consumers interact with store environments in the process of,virtually, all household purchase they make (Sarel 1981). Thus, store environments may encourage customers to purchase. The roles that store environments play are to provide informational cues to customers about the store and goods and communicate messages to stimulate consumers' emotions. The store environments differentiate the store from competing stores and build a unique service brand personality. However, the existing studies related to brand in the service industry mostly concentrated on the relationship between the quality of service and customer satisfaction, and they are mostly generalized while the connective studies focused on brand personality. Such approaches show limitations and are insufficient to investigate on the relationship between store environment and brand personality in the service industry. Accordingly, the study intends to identify the level of contribution to the establishment of brand personality made by the store's physical environments that influence on the specific brand characteristics depending on the type of service. The study also intends to identify what kind of relationships with brand personality exists with brand personality while being influenced by store environments. In addition, the study intends to make meaningful suggestions to better direct marketing efforts by identifying whether a brand personality makes a positive influence to induce an intention for repurchase. For this study, the service industry is classified into four categories based on to the characteristics of service: experimental-emotional service, emotional -credible service, credible-functional service, and functional-experimental service. The type of business with the most frequent customer contact is determined for each service type and the enterprise with the highest brand value in each service sector based on the report made by the Korea Management Association. They are designated as the representative of each category. The selected representatives are a fast-food store (experimental-emotional service), a cinema house (emotional-credible service), a bank (credible-functional service), and discount store (functional-experimental service). The survey was conducted for the four selected brands to represent each service category among consumers who are experienced users of the designated stores in Seoul Metropolitan City and Gyeonggi province via written questionnaires in order to verify the suggested assumptions in the study. In particular, the survey adopted 15 scales, which represent each characteristic factor, among the 42 unique characteristics developed by Jennifer Aaker(1997) to assess the brand personality of each service brand. SPSS for Windows Release 12.0 and LISREL were used in the analysis of data verification. The methodology of the structural equation model was used for the study and the pivotal findings are as follows. 1) The environmental factors ware classified as design factors, ambient factors, and social factors. Therefore, the validity of measurement scale of Baker et al. (1994) was proved. 2) The service brand personalities were subdivided as sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and ruggedness, which makes the use of the brand personality scales by Jennifer Aaker(1997) appropriate in the service industry as well. 3) One-way ANOVA analysis on the scales of store environment and service brand personality showed that there exist statistically significant differences in each service category. For example, the social factors were highest in discount stores, while the ambient factors and design factors were highest in fast-food stores. The discount stores were highest in the sincerity and excitement, while the highest point for banks was in the competence and ruggedness, and the highest point for fast-food stores was in the sophistication, The consumers will make a different respond to the physical environment of stores and service brand personality that are inherent to the corresponding service interface. Hence, the customers will make a different decision-making when dealing with different service categories. In this aspect, the relationships of variables in the proposed hypothesis appear to work in a different way depending on the exposed service category. 4) The store environment factors influenced on service brand personalities differently by category of service. The factors of store's physical environment are transferred to a brand and were verified to strengthen service brand personalities. In particular, the level of influence on the service brand personality by physical environment differs depending on service category or dimension, which indicates that there is a need to apply a different style of management to a different service category or dimension. It signifies that there needs to be a brand strategy established in order to positively influence the relationship with consumers by utilizing an appropriate brand personality factor depending on different characteristics by service category or dimension. 5) The service brand personalities influenced on the repurchase intention. Especially, the largest influence was made in the sophistication dimension of service brand personality scale; the unique and characteristically appropriate arrangement of physical environment will make customers stay in the service environment for a long time and will lead to give a positive influence on the repurchase intention. 6) The store environment factors influenced on the repurchase intention. Particularly, the largest influence was made on the social factors of store environment. The most intriguing finding is that the service factor among all other environment factors gives the biggest influence to the repurchase intention in most of all service types except fast-food stores. Such result indicates that the customers pay attention to how much the employees try to provide a quality service when they make an evaluation on the service brand. At the same time, it also indicates that the personal factor is directly transmitted to the construction of brand personality. The employees' attitude and behavior are the determinants to establish a service brand personality in the process of enhancing service interface. Hence, there should be a reinforced search for a method to efficiently manage the service staff who has a direct contact with customers in order to make an affirmative improvement of the customers' brand evaluation at the service interface. The findings suggest several managerial implications. 1) Results from the empirical study indicated that store environment factors have a strong positive impact on a service brand personality. To increase customers' repurchase intention of a service brand, the management is required to effectively manage store environment factors and create a friendly brand personality based on the corresponding service environment. 2) Mangers and researchers must understand and recognize that the store environment elements are important marketing tools, and that brand personality influences on consumers' repurchase intention. Based on such result of the study, a service brand could be utilized as an efficient measure to achieve a differentiation by enforcing the elements that are most influential among all other store environments for each service category. Therefore, brand personality established involving various store environments will further reinforce the relationship with customers through the elevated brand identification of which utilization to induce repurchase decision can be used as an entry barrier. 3) The study identified the store environment as a component of service brand personality for the store's effective communication with consumers. For this, all communication channels should be maintained with consistency and an integrated marketing communication should be executed to efficiently approach to a larger number of customers. Mangers and researchers must find strategies for aligning decisions about store environment elements with the retailers' marketing and store personality objectives. All ambient, design, and social factors need to be orchestrated so that consumers can take an appropriate store personality. In this study, the induced results from the previous studies were extended to the service industry so as to identify the customers' decision making process that leads to repurchase intention and a result similar to those of the previous studies. The findings suggested several theoretical and managerial implications. However, the situation that only one service brand served as the subject of analysis for each service category, and the situation that correlations among store environment elements were not identified, as well as the problem of representation in selection of samples should be considered and supplemented in the future when further studies are conducted. In addition, various antecedents and consequences of brand personality must be looked at in the aspect of the service environment for further research.