• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.25-57
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• 2012

This study identified motives for writing apparel product reviews in online stores, and determined what motives increase the behavior of writing reviews. It also classified store customers based on the type of writing motives, and clarified the characteristics of internet purchase behavior and of a demographic profile. Data were collected from 252 females aged 20s' and 30s' who have experience of reading and writing reviews on online shopping. The five types of writing motives were altruistic information sharing, remedying of a grievance and vengeance, economic incentives, helping new product development, and the expression of satisfaction feelings. Among five motives, altruistic information sharing, economic incentives, and helping new product development stimulate writing reviews. Store customers who write reviews were classified into three groups based on their writing motive types: Other consumer advocates(29.8%), self-interested shoppers(40.5%) and shoppers with moderate motives(29.8%). There were significant differences among three groups in writing behavior (the frequency of writing reviews, writing intent of reviews, duration of writing reviews, and frequency of online shopping) and age. Based on results, managerial implications were suggested. Long Abstract : The purpose of present study is to identify the types of writing motives on online shopping, and to clarify the motives affecting the behavior of writing reviews. This study also classifies online shoppers based on the motive types, and identifies the characteristics of the classified groups in terms of writing behavior, frequency of online shopping, and demographics. Use and Gratification Theory was adopted in this study. Qualitative research (focus group interview) and quantitative research were used. Korean women(20 to 39 years old) who reported experience with purchasing clothing online, and reading and writing reviews were selected as samples(n=252). Most of the respondents were relatively young (20-34yrs., 86.1%,), single (61.1%), employed(61.1%) and residents living in big cities(50.9%). About 69.8% of respondents read and 40.5% write apparel reviews frequently or very frequently. 24.6% of the respondents indicated an "average" in their writing frequency. Based on the qualitative result of focus group interviews and previous studies on motives for online community activities, measurement items of motives for writing after-purchase reviews were developed. All items were used a five-point Likert scale with endpoints 1 (strongly disagree) and 5 (strongly agree). The degree of writing behavior was measured by items concerning experience of writing reviews, frequency of writing reviews, amount of writing reviews, and intention of writing reviews. A five-point scale(strongly disagree-strongly agree) was employed. SPSS 18.0 was used for exploratory factor analysis, K-means cluster analysis, one-way ANOVA(Scheffe test) and ${\chi}^2$-test. Confirmatory factor analysis and path model analysis were conducted by AMOS 18.0. By conducting principal components factor analysis (varimax rotation, extracting factors with eigenvalues above 1.0) on the measurement items, five factors were identified: Altruistic information sharing, remedying of a grievance and vengeance, economic incentives, helping new product development, and expression of satisfaction feelings(see Table 1). The measurement model including these final items was analyzed by confirmatory factor analysis. The measurement model had good fit indices(GFI=.918, AGFI=.884, RMR=.070, RMSEA=.054, TLI=.941) except for the probability value associated with the ${\chi}^2$ test(${\chi}^2$=189.078, df=109, p=.00). Convergent validities of all variables were confirmed using composite reliability. All SMC values were found to be lower than AVEs confirming discriminant validity. The path model's goodness-of-fit was greater than the recommended limits based on several indices(GFI=.905, AGFI=.872, RMR=.070, RMSEA=.052, TLI=.935; ${\chi}^2$=260.433, df=155, p=.00). Table 2 shows that motives of altruistic information sharing, economic incentives and helping new product development significantly increased the degree of writing product reviews of online shopping. In particular, the effect of altruistic information sharing and pursuit of economic incentives on the behavior of writing reviews were larger than the effect of helping new product development. As shown in table 3, online store shoppers were classified into three groups: Other consumer advocates (29.8%), self-interested shoppers (40.5%), and moderate shoppers (29.8%). There were significant differences among the three groups in the degree of writing reviews (experience of writing reviews, frequency of writing reviews, amount of writing reviews, intention of writing reviews, and duration of writing reviews, frequency of online shopping) and age. For five aspects of writing behavior, the group of other consumer advocates who is mainly comprised of 20s had higher scores than the other two groups. There were not any significant differences between self-interested group and moderate group regarding writing behavior and demographics.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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• v.64 no.1
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• pp.136-151
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• 2014

This study systematically analyzed types of fashion brand application focusing on accounts created in Korea. While referring to 'Chanel' which has developed a fashion brand app for the first time in August of 2008, not only for App store by Apple Inc. of the greatest market share but also for Android market, the one and only competitor of App store, the study examined cases of fashion brand app in Korea and foreign countries which have been in service till August of 2013 since the year of 2008. To achieve the research goal, the study conducted a literature research and a case review, categorizing the app by their distinctive functions which were Basic Information, SNS, AR, LBS, Entertainment, Mobile Shopping and Live Streaming. As for the first function, Basic Information, it was considered to provide information on a brand such as prices, sizes and colors of products which should be the most fundamental function of a fashion brand. The function would include look book, catalogues, photographs and others of products, helping users of the app with their understanding on images and concepts of the brand. Second, SNS function was considered useful for its mobility and communication and with the help of theirs, the users share fashion information with each other. Third, AR function as in a filed of virtual reality would edit virtual objects to look real in an actual environment. This would eventually offer the users a chance to try for clothes virtually. The fourth function, LBS, would work with GPS to find a store closest from a present location. This would be a help when the users try to find stores holding promotion events or trails while hiking in mountains. The fifth Entertainment function would include all sorts of games and chances for the users to listen to music and keep fashion diaries. The sixth function, Mobile Shopping, would help the users purchase items online via the app as they would not visit a store in person. The seventh function, Live Streaming, would give the users chances to actually see fashion collections in real time, held all over the world in every season. Because of this function, not only fashion experts but also regular people have become able to enjoy the fashion shows. The distinctive characteristics of the fashion brand application discussed in the study will be a useful reference when any relevant fields try to design other new fashion brand application.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.21-42
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• 1998

This paper aims at examining the regional comparison of the business organization of retailing in the Seoul and Taegu metropolitan areas, as an attempt to understand regional structure of retailing within metropolitan areas which represents the suburbanization. On the national level, retail sales have concentrated on larger metropolitan area, the Seoul metroplitan area, the first largest metropolitan area, having higher sales for population scale. While the Taegu metropolitan area, the third largest metropolitan area, appears to lower retail sales for population scale. In order to confirm such phenomenon, this paper is to analyze and to compare the industrial composition of retailing by industry in 1991 of Seoul with that of Taegu. And this paper is to analyze the regional comparison of business organization of retailing: the percents of establishments under four employees, of juridical establishments, of employees of ordinary times, the annual sales per establishment of retailing. And the characteristics of business organization of retailing by industry are analyzed by principal components analysis, and the explanation of the types with component in each district(city, county, ward) is analyzed by cluster analysis(Ward method). The data of 1991 were obtained from the statistics in the Report on Establishment Census(Vol.3 Wholesale and Retail Trade) published by the National Statistics Office. The results are as follows: 1. The composition of retailing by industry in Seoul metropolitan area by annual sales in 1991 is characterized as appeared very higher composition rates of retailing of textiles, clothing, footwear and apparel accessaries', ‘retailing of furniture, home furnishings and equipment’, retailing of jewellery and watches’, ‘retailing of printed matter and stationery’, ‘retailing of personal transport equipment and gasoline service stations’, and ‘general merchandise stores’. But in Taegu metropolitan area, ‘retailing of food, beverages and tobacco’, ‘retailing of drugs, cosmetics and other chemical goods’, 'retailing household fuel’, and ‘genernal retail trade, n.e.c.’appears very high. Therefore Seoul metropolitan area has larger business scale and retailing of shopping goods has developed than Taegu metropolitan area.

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.27-37
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• 1999

The purpose of this study is to provide for the basic data useful to the effective production and marketing of the brassiere befitting adult women's body shapes and preferences, and thereby, help them improve their apparel life. For this purpose, 563 Korean adult women aged between 20-59 were sampled to survey their practices of purchasing the brassieres and positively identify the factors affecting the practices and thereupon, determine the correlations among them by age group. Data is processed by a computer(SAS) and analyzed by using frequency, percentage, $\chi^2$-test, ANOVA, Duncan-test. The main results of this study are as follows; 1. The adult women tend to use such mass media as TV, magazines, catalogues and DM to decide for themselves which brassiere befits them most, and to check the brand-name(78.8%) or the sizes(93.4%), but more than 90% of them purchase their brassieres without trying on them. 2. The places of purchasing on which adult women rely most for their brassiere are department stores(32.6%), agencies(26.1%) and discount or pension shops(25.4%), while more than 90% of the sample women often visit bargain sale shops. The average number of brassieres possessed by our adult women is 5.7, and an adult women buys 2.6 brassiere costing 10-30 thousand wons a year on average and consumes a brassiere for the period from 6 months to 2 years. 3. It had been disclosed that the brand favored most by adult women is Venus(56.2%), followed by Vivien (17.6%), Wacoal(6.8%), Amie(2.5%) and Body Guard(2.3%). The most influential factors for the popularity of brands are fitting condition(40.3%) and design(23.8%), which suggests that consumers appreciate functionality and aesthetics. The most important reference affecting our women's choice of brassiere is size(64.4%), followed by design and functionality. The brassiere style favored most by adult women is a wire-type 3/4 cup brassiere made of thin material with sewing lines, while the most favorite color is white. In all, it has been found through this study that adult women's practices of buying their brassieres differ by age group, which may well suggest that brassiere production need to take such age-wise practices into consideration in setting up their brassiere production and marketing strategies.

• Design Convergence Study
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.45-57
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• 2018

Sales for SPA brand names of private label apparels are on the rise in the domestic clothing market. The aim of this study is to analyze the characteristics of SPA brands and how each color system is proposed within the BI system. In this study, 8 brands were selected as the most popular SPA brands in Korea and abroad with stores based on brand power and sales and preference by consumers. Therefore, among information factors such as brand identity (BI) and color characteristic. sign system, package, and environmental factors, buildings facade and interior design of eight brands were investigated. Research into color application of BI revealed that four brands used red colors with different tones with different identity differentiation. For the other four brands, the company applied BI designs that gained the brand's character such as a black-and-white or dark blue one. Thus, it is considered important to select BI color in order to differentiate and enhance preferences in brand identity.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.129-142
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• 2016

Customer product reviews have become one of the important factors for purchase decision makings. Customers believe that reviews written by others who have already had an experience with the product offer more reliable information than that provided by sellers. However, there are too many products and reviews, the advantage of e-commerce can be overwhelmed by increasing search costs. Reading all of the reviews to find out the pros and cons of a certain product can be exhausting. To help users find the most useful information about products without much difficulty, e-commerce companies try to provide various ways for customers to write and rate product reviews. To assist potential customers, online stores have devised various ways to provide useful customer reviews. Different methods have been developed to classify and recommend useful reviews to customers, primarily using feedback provided by customers about the helpfulness of reviews. Most shopping websites provide customer reviews and offer the following information: the average preference of a product, the number of customers who have participated in preference voting, and preference distribution. Most information on the helpfulness of product reviews is collected through a voting system. Amazon.com asks customers whether a review on a certain product is helpful, and it places the most helpful favorable and the most helpful critical review at the top of the list of product reviews. Some companies also predict the usefulness of a review based on certain attributes including length, author(s), and the words used, publishing only reviews that are likely to be useful. Text mining approaches have been used for classifying useful reviews in advance. To apply a text mining approach based on all reviews for a product, we need to build a term-document matrix. We have to extract all words from reviews and build a matrix with the number of occurrences of a term in a review. Since there are many reviews, the size of term-document matrix is so large. It caused difficulties to apply text mining algorithms with the large term-document matrix. Thus, researchers need to delete some terms in terms of sparsity since sparse words have little effects on classifications or predictions. The purpose of this study is to suggest a better way of building term-document matrix by deleting useless terms for review classification. In this study, we propose neutrality index to select words to be deleted. Many words still appear in both classifications - useful and not useful - and these words have little or negative effects on classification performances. Thus, we defined these words as neutral terms and deleted neutral terms which are appeared in both classifications similarly. After deleting sparse words, we selected words to be deleted in terms of neutrality. We tested our approach with Amazon.com's review data from five different product categories: Cellphones & Accessories, Movies & TV program, Automotive, CDs & Vinyl, Clothing, Shoes & Jewelry. We used reviews which got greater than four votes by users and 60% of the ratio of useful votes among total votes is the threshold to classify useful and not-useful reviews. We randomly selected 1,500 useful reviews and 1,500 not-useful reviews for each product category. And then we applied Information Gain and Support Vector Machine algorithms to classify the reviews and compared the classification performances in terms of precision, recall, and F-measure. Though the performances vary according to product categories and data sets, deleting terms with sparsity and neutrality showed the best performances in terms of F-measure for the two classification algorithms. However, deleting terms with sparsity only showed the best performances in terms of Recall for Information Gain and using all terms showed the best performances in terms of precision for SVM. Thus, it needs to be careful for selecting term deleting methods and classification algorithms based on data sets.

• Food Science of Animal Resources
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.122-126
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• 2007

Expenditure on meat and meat products has been increased in Korea due to the increase of income and the change of diet. From raising farm animals to eating the meat, various hazardous elements can make their ways into the meat and meat products. Recently the issues on food safety and hygiene are drawing a lot of attention, and the current system for managing the safety of foods is still needed to be improved. This survey was aimed to monitor the current situation of country-of-origin labels and hygiene for the meat markets at 4 regions Korea. The survey was performed by collecting samples from whole- sale and retail stores in the nation, which were selling beef. The markets were divided into groups as to territory and the size of the market (Large size, Medium size, and Small size). In terms of size distribution, small butcher shops occupied the highest percentage. On the itemized suitability test of unpacked and packed beef, all the market of 4 regions showed good agreements. However, such labels indicating the methods of cooking and storage were not properly posted on the products. Especially for Ho-nam region, corrections are needed. The results of monitoring sanitation conditions for the butcher shops at 4 regions in Korea showed relatively low suitability. Especially, there were serious lack of knowledge about wearing the sanitation clothing, caps, and shoes. The problem with food safety is so complicated that producer, consumer, food manufacturer, the press, the government, and scholar should solve altogether. It is necessary to educate farmers, food handlers, consumers, etc. and provide them with an accurate information and knowledge.