• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
• /
• v.22 no.4
• /
• pp.157-176
• /
• 2016

For a long time, mobile phone had a sole function of communication. Recently however, abrupt innovations in technology allowed extension of the sphere in mobile phone activities. Development of technology enabled realization of almost computer-like environment even on a very small device. Such advancement yielded several forms of new high-tech devices such as smartphone and tablet PC, which quickly proliferated. Simultaneously with the diffusion of the mobile devices, mobile applications for those devices also prospered and soon became deeply penetrated in consumers' daily lives. Numerous mobile applications have been released in app stores yielding trillions of cumulative downloads. However, a big majority of the applications are disregarded from consumers. Even after the applications are purchased, they do not survive long in consumers' mobile devices and are soon abandoned. Nevertheless, it is imperative for both app developers and app-store operators to understand consumer behaviors and to develop marketing strategies aiming to make sustainable business by first increasing sales of mobile applications and by also designing surviving strategy for applications. Therefore, this research analyzes consumers' mobile application usage behavior in a frame of substitution/supplementary of application categories and several explanatory variables. Considering that consumers of mobile devices use multiple apps simultaneously, this research adopts multivariate probit models to explain mobile application usage behavior and to derive correlation between categories of applications for observing substitution/supplementary of application use. The research adopts several explanatory variables including sociodemographic data, user experiences of purchased applications that reflect future purchasing behavior of paid applications as well as consumer attitudes toward marketing efforts, variables representing consumer attitudes toward rating of the app and those representing consumer attitudes toward app-store promotion efforts (i.e., top developer badge and editor's choice badge). Results of this study can be explained in hedonic and utilitarian framework. Consumers who use hedonic applications, such as those of game and entertainment-related, are of young age with low education level. However, consumers who are old and have received higher education level prefer utilitarian application category such as life, information etc. There are disputable arguments over whether the users of SNS are hedonic or utilitarian. In our results, consumers who are younger and those with higher education level prefer using SNS category applications, which is in a middle of utilitarian and hedonic results. Also, applications that are directly related to tangible assets, such as banking, stock and mobile shopping, are only negatively related to experience of purchasing of paid app, meaning that consumers who put weights on tangible assets do not prefer buying paid application. Regarding categories, most correlations among categories are significantly positive. This is because someone who spend more time on mobile devices tends to use more applications. Game and entertainment category shows significant and positive correlation; however, there exists significantly negative correlation between game and information, as well as game and e-commerce categories of applications. Meanwhile, categories of game and SNS as well as game and finance have shown no significant correlations. This result clearly shows that mobile application usage behavior is quite clearly distinguishable - that the purpose of using mobile devices are polarized into utilitarian and hedonic purpose. This research proves several arguments that can only be explained by second-hand real data, not by survey data, and offers behavioral explanations of mobile application usage in consumers' perspectives. This research also shows substitution/supplementary patterns of consumer application usage, which then explain consumers' mobile application usage behaviors. However, this research has limitations in some points. Classification of categories itself is disputable, for classification is diverged among several studies. Therefore, there is a possibility of change in results depending on the classification. Lastly, although the data are collected in an individual application level, we reduce its observation into an individual level. Further research will be done to resolve these limitations.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
• /
• v.20 no.2
• /
• pp.135-148
• /
• 2010

Arab boycotts of Danish products, Australian boycotts of French products and Chinese consumer aversion toward Japanese products are all examples of how adverse actions at the country level might impact consumers' behavior. The animosity literature has examined how consumers react to the adverse actions of other countries, and how such animosity impacts consumers' attitudes and preferences for products from the transgressing country. For example, Chinese consumers are less likely to buy Japanese products because of Japanese atrocities during World War II and the unjust economic dealings of the Japanese (Klein, Ettenson and Morris 1998). The marketing literature, however, has not examined how consumers react to adverse actions committed by their own country against other countries, and whether such actions affect their attitudes towards purchasing products that originated from the adversely affected country. The social psychology literature argues that consumers will experience a feeling called collective guilt, in response to such adverse actions. Collective guilt stems from the distress experienced by group members when they accept that their group is responsible for actions that have harmed another group (Branscombe, Slugoski, and Kappenn 2004). Examples include Americans feeling guilty about the atrocities committed by the U.S. military at Abu Ghraib prison (Iyer, Schamder and Lickel 2007), and the Dutch about their occupation of Indonesia in the past (Doosje et al. 1998). The primary aim of this study is to examine consumers' perceptions of adverse actions by members of one's own country against another country and whether such perceptions affected their attitudes towards products originating from the country transgressed against. More specifically, one objective of this study is to examine the perceptual antecedents of collective guilt, an emotional reaction to adverse actions performed by members of one's country against another country. Another objective is to examine the impact of collective guilt on consumers' perceptions of, and preference for, products originating from the country transgressed against by the consumers' own country. If collective guilt emerges as a significant predictor, companies originating from countries that have been transgressed against might be able to capitalize on such unfortunate events. This research utilizes the animosity model introduced by Klein, Ettenson and Morris (1998) and later expanded on by Klein (2002). Klein finds that U.S. consumers harbor animosity toward the Japanese. This animosity is experienced in response to events that occurred during World War II (i.e., the bombing of Pearl Harbor) and more recently the perceived economic threat from Japan. Thus this study argues that the events of Word War II (i.e., bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) might lead U.S. consumers to experience collective guilt. A series of three hypotheses were introduced. The first hypothesis deals with the antecedents of collective guilt. Previous research argues that collective guilt is experienced when consumers perceive that the harm following a transgression is illegitimate and that the country from which the transgressors originate should be responsible for the adverse actions. (Wohl, Branscombe, and Klar 2006). Therefore the following hypothesis was offered: H1a. Higher levels of perceived illegitimacy for the harm committed will result in higher levels of collective guilt. H1b. Higher levels of responsibility will be positively associated with higher levels of collective guilt. The second and third hypotheses deal with the impact of collective guilt on the preferences for Japanese products. Klein (2002) found that higher levels of animosity toward Japan resulted in a lower preference for a Japanese product relative to a South Korean product but not a lower preference for a Japanese product relative to a U.S. product. These results therefore indicate that the experience of collective guilt will lead to a higher preference for a Japanese product if consumers are contemplating a choice that inv olves a decision to buy Japanese versus South Korean product but not if the choice involves a decision to buy a Japanese versus a U.S. product. H2. Collective guilt will be positively related to the preference for a Japanese product over a South Korean product, but will not be related to the preference for a Japanese product over a U.S. product. H3. Collective guilt will be positively related to the preference for a Japanese product over a South Korean product, holding constant product judgments and animosity. An experiment was conducted to test the hypotheses. The illegitimacy of the harm and responsibility were manipulated by exposing respondents to a description of adverse events occurring during World War II. Data were collected using an online consumer panel in the United States. Subjects were randomly assigned to either the low levels of responsibility and illegitimacy condition (n=259) or the high levels of responsibility and illigitemacy (n=268) condition. Latent Variable Structural Equation Modeling (LVSEM) was used to test the hypothesized relationships. The first hypothesis is supported as both the illegitimacy of the harm and responsibility assigned to the Americans for the harm committed against the Japanese during WWII have a positive impact on collective guilt. The second hypothesis is also supported as collective guilt is positively related to preference for a Japanese product over a South Korean product but is not related to preference for a Japanese product over a U.S. product. Finally there is support for the third hypothesis, since collective guilt is positively related to the preference for a Japanese product over a South Korean product while controlling for the effect of product judgments about Japanese products and animosity. The results of these studies lead to several conclusions. First, the illegitimacy of harm and responsibility can be manipulated and that they are antecedents of collective guilt. Second, collective guilt has an impact on a consumers' decision when they face a choice set that includes a product from the country that was the target of the adverse action and a product from another foreign country. This impact however disappears from a consumers' decision when they face a choice set that includes a product from the country that was the target of the adverse action and a domestic product. This result suggests that collective guilt might be a viable factor for company originating from the country transgressed against if its competitors are foreign but not if they are local.

• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
• /
• v.16 no.3
• /
• pp.191-209
• /
• 2011

In a buyer-seller transaction process, 'value for money,' a measure of quality-price-ratio, is one of the most important criteria for buyers' purchasing decisions. The purpose of this paper is to suggest a method which helps online shoppers choose the best of several sellers offering homogeneous goods. We suggest FDH (free disposal hull) model, an applied model of data envelopment analysis (DEA), for online buyer-seller transactions and verify it with the data from an Internet comparison shopping site. For this purpose, we analyze consumer choice behaviors by examining how consumers respond to different sale conditions such as price, brand, or delivery time. Then, we implement a seller recommendation system to support buyers' purchasing decisions. We expect our FDH model to provide valuable information for rational buyers who want to pay the least price for high quality products/services and to be used in implementing automated evaluation processes in micro transactions. Moreover, we expect that our results can be utilized for sellers' benchmarking strategies which help sellers be more competitive by showing them how to attract buyers.

• The Journal of Small Business Innovation
• /
• v.20 no.1
• /
• pp.35-46
• /
• 2017

The purpose of this study is to obtain the implications for establishing a marketing strategy for retailers by analyzing whether the consumer's preference for products (food) is influenced by on-line, off-line, and omni-channel preferences. The research model consisted of the effects of consumers' food selection characteristics on business preference and omni channel preference. The results of analysis based on 477 questionnaires are summarized as follows. First, food purchasing characteristics that utilize the seven characteristics of (1) freshness of food, (2) taste, (3) quality and safety, (4) tasting, (5) food function and information, (6) country of origin, and (7) brand loyalty, has various effects on types of business preference, omni-channel preference. The adopted hypotheses were selected in order of brand loyalty (5 times), freshness (3 times), tasting (3 times), and origin (1 time). The selective attributes on foods are: (1) what kind of brand, (2) how good the freshness is, (3) tasting. (4) The country of origin is to be compressed. Actually consumers seem to utilize only the core selective factors that are appropriate to the characteristics of the distribution channel rather than all of them in the shopping of the food, and there is three characteristics on Convenience Store and only one or two factors in the other types of business. Second, in the analysis of the omni-channel preference analysis, food selection characteristics has been shown to have a limited effect, which is attributed to the fact that the consumer has not yet understood the concept of omni channel. Third, the results of this study suggest that there is a need to reflect the selection characteristics of foods that have diverse influences by business type in the marketing strategies. Because consumers make reasonable consumption to use both on-line and off-line simultaneously, consumers who use Omni Channel focus on quality and safety of food, identify products through tasting, pursue brands that can trust anywhere. Customers who pursue rationality will have a high preference for using Omni Channel. Product choice characteristic has significant effect on omni-channel preference. For a few years, omni-channel strategy of retailers meets with a difficulty. This study make a first attempt to study omni-channel preference changing retailing paradigm.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
• /
• v.28 no.2
• /
• pp.65-75
• /
• 2010

When the cost-benefit analysis is applied for social discount rate(SDR), the choice of SDR to be used in analysis is critical. One of the important issues when public investment project evaluate what is the SDR theory, so there have studied about SDR and no exact answer it so far. In this study, there are three of SDR theories that be estimated social time preference rate, social investment returns and the weighted average method from 1990s, 2000 to 2003 and 2004 to 2008.. First, social time preference method computes consumer's interest rate and the model of Pearce and Ulph(1999). Second, social investment returns method computes private returns of capital. Third, the weighted average method computes the model of Squire, L., Herman G. van der Tak(1975) and private consumption expense and the private investment expense. SDR is estimated in the rage between 2.4% and 3.9% from 2004 to 2008. It is not appropriate that the interest rate was unstable. But it is consider for social equity from present to future generations. Considering this things, downward need to the value of current SDR 5.5%.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
• /
• v.20 no.1
• /
• pp.127-140
• /
• 2010

The benefit that a consumer derives from the use of a good often depends on the number of other consumers purchasing the same goods or other compatible items. This property, which is known as network externality, is significant in many IT related industries. Over the past few decades, network externalities have been recognized in the context of physical networks such as the telephone and railroad industries. Today, as many products are provided as a form of system that consists of compatible components, the appreciation of network externality is becoming increasingly important. Network externalities have been extensively studied among economists who have been seeking to explain new phenomena resulting from rapid advancements in ICT (Information and Communication Technology). As a result of these efforts, a new body of theories for 'New Economy' has been proposed. The theoretical bottom-line argument of such theories is that technologies subject to network effects exhibit multiple equilibriums and will finally lock into a monopoly with one standard cornering the entire market. They emphasize that such "tippiness" is a typical characteristic in such networked markets, describing that multiple incompatible technologies rarely coexist and that the switch to a single, leading standard occurs suddenly. Moreover, it is argued that this standardization process is path dependent, and the ultimate outcome is unpredictable. With incomplete information about other actors' preferences, there can be excess inertia, as consumers only moderately favor the change, and hence are themselves insufficiently motivated to start the bandwagon rolling, but would get on it once it did start to roll. This startup problem can prevent the adoption of any standard at all, even if it is preferred by everyone. Conversely, excess momentum is another possible outcome, for example, if a sponsoring firm uses low prices during early periods of diffusion. The aim of this paper is to analyze the dynamics of the adoption process in markets exhibiting network effects by focusing on two factors; switching and agent heterogeneity. Switching is an important factor that should be considered in analyzing the adoption process. An agent's switching invokes switching by other adopters, which brings about a positive feedback process that can significantly complicate the adoption process. Agent heterogeneity also plays a important role in shaping the early development of the adoption process, which has a significant impact on the later development of the process. The effects of these two factors are analyzed by developing an agent-based simulation model. ABM is a computer-based simulation methodology that can offer many advantages over traditional analytical approaches. The model is designed such that agents have diverse preferences regarding technology and are allowed to switch their previous choice. The simulation results showed that the adoption processes in a market exhibiting networks effects are significantly affected by the distribution of agents and the occurrence of switching. In particular, it is found that both weak heterogeneity and strong network effects cause agents to start to switch early and this plays a role of expediting the emergence of 'lock-in.' When network effects are strong, agents are easily affected by changes in early market shares. This causes agents to switch earlier and in turn speeds up the market's tipping. The same effect is found in the case of highly homogeneous agents. When agents are highly homogeneous, the market starts to tip toward one technology rapidly, and its choice is not always consistent with the populations' initial inclination. Increased volatility and faster lock-in increase the possibility that the market will reach an unexpected outcome. The primary contribution of this study is the elucidation of the role of parameters characterizing the market in the development of the lock-in process, and identification of conditions where such unexpected outcomes happen.

• Asia Marketing Journal
• /
• v.14 no.2
• /
• pp.209-237
• /
• 2012

1. Research Purpose Consumers rely on various clues to evaluate their decision to patronize a retail store, and store brand is one of them (Dodds 1991; Grewal et al. 1998). As consumers find ever increasing variety of contact points connecting them to specific store, the value of experiential shopping as a means of increasing store's brand equity warrants greater attention from scholars of retail management. Retail shopping values are credited for creating not only cognitive experiences like brand knowledge but also emotional experiences such as shopping pleasure and pride (Schmitt 1999). This may be because today's consumers place emphasis on emotional values associated with shopping pleasure, lifestyle brought to life, brand relationship, and store atmosphere more than utilitarian values such as product quality and price. Many previous literature found this to be true (Ahn and Lee 2011; Mathwick et al. 2001). This brings forth important research issues and questions regarding the roles of shopping experiential values and brand equity with regard to consumer's retail patronage choice. However, despite this importance, research on this area remains quite inadequate (Hwang 2010). For this reason, this study aims to verify the relationships among experiential shopping values, retail store brand equity and tries to link that with customer loyalty by surveying large-scale discount store shoppers in Korea and China. 2. Research Contents In order to carry out the research objective, this study conducted comprehensive literature survey on previous literature by discussing major findings and implications with regard to shopping values and retail brand equity and store loyalty. For data collection, researcher employed survey-based research method where data were collected in two major cities of Korea (Seoul) and China (Bejing) and sampling frame was based on patrons of large discount stores in both countries. Specific research questions raised in this study are as follows; RQ1: How do Korean and Chinese consumers differently perceive of shopping values regarding shopping at large-sclae discount stores? RQ2: Are there differences in consumers' emotional consumption propensities? RQ3: Do Korean and Chinese consumers display different perceptions of brand equity towards large-scale discount stores? RQ4: Are there differences in relationships between shopping values and brand equity for Korean and Chinese consumers? For statistical analysis, SPSS17.0, AMOS17.0 and SmartPLS were employed. 3. Research Results The data collected through face-to-face survey conducted in Seoul and Bejing revealed appropriate data validity and reliability as a result of exploratory/confirmatory factor analysis and reliability tests, andh SEM model yielding satisfactory model fitness. The result of the study may be summarized by three main points. First, as a result of testing differences in consumption dispositions, Chinese consumers showed higher scores in aesthetic and symbolic dispositions, whereas Korean consumers scored higher in hedonic disposition. Second, testing on perceptions toward brand equity of large discount stores showed that Korean consumers exhibited more positive perceptions of brand awareness and brand image than Chinese counterparts. Third, the result of exploratory factor analysis on the experiential shopping values revealed different factors for each country. On Korean side, consumer interest value, aesthetic value, and hedonic value were prominent, whereas on Chinese side, hedonic value, aesthetic value, consumer interest value, and service excellence value were found salient. 4. Research Implications While many previous studies on inter-country differences in retailing area mainly focused on cultural dispositions or orientations to explain the differences, this study sets itself apart by specifically targeting individual consumer's shopping values from an experiential viewpoint. The study result provides important theoretical as well as practical implications for large-scale discount store, especially the impotance of fully exploring the linkage between shopping values and brand equity, which has significant influence on loyalty. Therefore, the specific implications deriving from the result shed some important insights upon the consumption values based on shopping experiences and brand equity. The differences found in store shoppers between the two countries may also provide useful insights for Korean and Chinese retailers who plan to expand their operations globally. Related strategic implications derived from this study is the importance of localizing retail strategy which is based on the differences found in experiential shopping values between the two country groups. Especially the finding that Chinese consumers value consumer interest and service excellence, whereas Koreans place importance on hedonic or aesthetic values indicates the need to differentiate the consumer's psychographical profiles when it comes to expanding retail operations globally. Particularly important will be to pursue price-orienated strategy in China in consideration of the high emphasis on consumer interests and service excellence, but to emphasize the symbolic aspects of brand equity in Korea by maximizing the brand equity associated with aesthetic values and hedonic orientations. 5. Recommendations This study focused on generic retail branded discount stores in both countries, thus making it difficult to tease out store-specific strategies based on specific retail brands. Future studies may benefit fro employing actual brand names in survey questionnaire to verify relationship between shopping values and brand-based store strategy. As with other studies of this nature, this study needs to strengthen the result's generalizability by selecting respondents from a wider spectrum of respondents.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
• /
• v.25 no.4
• /
• pp.93-102
• /
• 2016

Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) system, bi-direction power trading technology, enables drivers possessing electric vehicle to sell the spare electricity charged in the vehicle to power distribution company. The drivers gain profit by charging electricity in the day time of high electricity rate. In this regard, the government is preparing the policies of building and supporting V2G infrastructure and demanding the potential consumers' preference for the V2G system. This paper attempts to analyze the consumers' preference using the data from obtained a survey of randomly selected 1,000 individuals. To this end, choice experiment, an economic technique, is employed here. The attributes considered in the study are residual amount of electricity, electricity trading hours, required plug-in time, and price measured as an amount additional to current gasoline vehicle price. The multinomial logit model, which requires the assumption of 'independence of irrelevant alternatives', is applied but the assumption could not be satisfied in our data. Thus, we finally utilized nested logit model which does not require the assumption. All the parameter estimates in the utility function are statistically significant at the 10% level. The estimation results show that the marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) for one hour increase in electricity trading hours is estimated to be KRW 1,601,057. On the other hand, a one percent reduction in residual amount of electricity and one hour reduction in required plug-in time in V2G system are computed to be KRW -91,911 and -470,619, respectively. The findings can provide policy makers with useful information for decision-making about introducing and managing V2G system.

• Journal of Distribution Research
• /
• v.15 no.3
• /
• pp.111-137
• /
• 2010

The basic purpose of this study is to investigate perceived quality and service personal value affecting the result of long-term relationship between service buyers and suppliers. This research presented a constructive model(perceived quality affecting the service personal value and the moderate effect of NFC) in the on off line and then propose the research model base on prior researches and studies about relationships among components of service. Data were gathered from respondents who visit at the education service market. For this study, Data were analyzed by AMOS 7.0. We integrate the literature on services marketing with researches on personal values and perceived quality. The SERPVAL scale presented here allows for the creation of a common ground for assessing service personal values, giving a clear understanding of the key value dimensions behind service choice and usage. It will lead to a focus of future research in services marketing, extending knowledge in the field and stimulating further empirical research on service personal values. At the managerial level, as a tool the SERPVAL scale should allow practitioners to evaluate and improve the value of a service, and consequently, to define strategies and actions to address services for customers based on their fundamental personal values. Through qualitative and empirical research, we find that the service quality construct conforms to the structure of a second-order factor model that ties service quality perceptions to distinct and actionable dimensions: outcome, interaction, and environmental quality. In turn, each has two subdimensions that define the basis of service quality perceptions. The authors further suggest that for each of these subdimensions to contribute to improved service quality perceptions, the quality received by consumers must be perceived to be reliable, responsive, and empathetic. Although the service personal value may be found in researches that explore individual values and their consequences for consumer behavior, there is no established operationalization of a SERPVAL scale. The inexistence of an established scale, duly adapted in order to understand and analyze personal values behind services usage, exposes the need of a measurement scale with such a purpose. This need has to be rooted, however, in a conceptualization of the construct being scaled. Service personal values can be defined as a customer's overall assessment of the use of a service based on the perception of what is achieved in terms of his own personal values. As consumer behaviors serve to show an individual's values, the use of a service can also be a way to fulfill and demonstrate consumers'personal values. In this sense, a service can provide more to the customer than its concrete and abstract attributes at both the attribute and the quality levels, and more than its functional consequences at the value level. Both values and services literatures agree, that personal value is the highest-level concept, followed by instrumental values, attitudes and finally by product attributes. Purchasing behaviors are agreed to be the end result of these concepts' interaction, with personal values taking a major role in the final decision process. From both consumers' and practitioners' perspectives, values are extremely relevant, as they are desirable goals that serve as guiding principles in people's lives. While building on previous research, we propose to assess service personal values through three broad groups of individual dimensions; at the self-oriented level, we use (1) service value to peaceful life (SVPL) and, at the social-oriented level, we use (2) service value to social recognition (SVSR), and (3) service value to social integration (SVSI). Service value to peaceful life is our first dimension. This dimension emerged as a combination of values coming from the RVS scale, a scale built specifically to assess general individual values. If a service promotes a pleasurable life, brings or improves tranquility, safety and harmony, then its user recognizes the value of this service. Generally, this service can improve the user's pleasure of life, since it protects or defends the consumer from threats to life or pressures on it. While building upon both the LOV scale, a scale built specifically to assess consumer values, and the RVS scale for individual values, we develop the other two dimensions: SVSR and SVSI. The roles of social recognition and social integration to improve service personal value have been seriously neglected. Social recognition derives its outcome utility from its predictive utility. When applying this underlying belief to our second dimension, SVSR, we assume that people use a service while taking into consideration the content of what is delivered. Individuals consider whether the service aids in gaining respect from others, social recognition and status, as well as whether it allows achieving a more fulfilled and stimulating life, which might then be revealed to others. People also tend to engage in behavior that receives social recognition and to avoid behavior that leads to social disapproval, and this contributes to an individual's social integration. This leads us to the third dimension, SVSI, which is based on the fact that if the consumer perceives that a service strengthens friendships, provides the possibility of becoming more integrated in the group, or promotes better relationships at the social, professional or family levels, then the service will contribute to social integration, and naturally the individual will recognize personal value in the service. Most of the research in business values deals with individual values. However, to our knowledge, no study has dealt with assessing overall personal values as well as their dimensions in a service context. Our final results show that the scales adapted from the Schwartz list were excluded. A possible explanation is that although Schwartz builds on Rokeach work in order to explore individual values, its dimensions might be especially focused on analyzing societal values. As we are looking for individual dimensions, this might explain why the values inspired by the Schwartz list were excluded from the model. The hierarchical structure of the final scale presented in this paper also presents theoretical implications. Although we cannot claim to definitively capture the dimensions of service personal values, we believe that we come close to capturing these overall evaluations because the second-order factor extracts the underlying commonality among dimensions. In addition to obtaining respondents' evaluations of the dimensions, the second-order factor model captures the common variance among these dimensions, reflecting the respondents' overall assessment of service personal values. Towards this fact, we expect that the service personal values conceptualization and measurement scale presented here contributes to both business values literature and the service marketing field, allowing for the delineation of strategies for adding value to services. This new scale also presents managerial implications. The SERPVAL dimensions give some guidance on how to better pursue a highly service-oriented business strategy. Indeed, the SERPVAL scale can be used for benchmarking purposes, as this scale can be used to identify whether or not a firms' marketing strategies are consistent with consumers' expectations. Managerial assessment of the personal values of a service might be extremely important because it allows managers to better understand what customers want or value. Thus, this scale allows us to identify what services are really valuable to the final consumer; providing knowledge for making choices regarding which services to include. Traditional approaches have focused their attention on service attributes (as quality) and service consequences(as service value), but personal values may be an important set of variables to be considered in understanding what attracts consumers to a certain service. By using the SERPVAL scale to assess the personal values associated with a services usage, managers may better understand the reasons behind services' usage, so that they may handle them more efficiently. While testing nomological validity, our empirical findings demonstrate that the three SERPVAL dimensions are positively and significantly associated with satisfaction. Additionally, while service value to social integration is related only with loyalty, service value to peaceful life is associated with both loyalty and repurchase intent. It is also interesting and surprising that service value to social recognition appears not to be significantly linked with loyalty and repurchase intent. A possible explanation is that no mobile service provider has yet emerged in the market as a luxury provider. All of the Portuguese providers are still trying to capture market share by means of low-end pricing. This research has implications for consumers as well. As more companies seek to build relationships with their customers, consumers are easily able to examine whether these relationships provide real value or not to their own lives. The selection of a strategy for a particular service depends on its customers' personal values. Being highly customer-oriented means having a strong commitment to customers, trying to create customer value and understanding customer needs. Enhancing service distinctiveness in order to provide a peaceful life, increase social recognition and gain a better social integration are all possible strategies that companies may pursue, but the one to pursue depends on the outstanding personal values held by the service customers. Data were gathered from 284 respondents in the korean discount store and online shopping mall market. This research proposed 3 hypotheses on 6 latent variables and tested through structural equation modeling. 6 alternative measurements were compared through statistical significance test of the 6 paths of research model and the overall fitting level of structural equation model. and the result was successful. and Perceived quality more positively influences service personal value when NFC is high than when no NFC is low in the off-line market. The results of the study indicate that service quality is properly modeled as an antecedent of service personal value. We consider the research and managerial implications of the study and its limitations. In sum, by knowing the dimensions a consumer takes into account when choosing a service, a better understanding of purchasing behaviors may be realized, guiding managers toward customers expectations. By defining strategies and actions that address potential problems with the service personal values, managers might ultimately influence their firm's performance. we expect to contribute to both business values and service marketing literatures through the development of the service personal value. At a time when marketing researchers are challenged to provide research with practical implications, it is also believed that this framework may be used by managers to pursue service-oriented business strategies while taking into consideration what customers value.

• Journal of Industrial Convergence
• /
• v.1 no.1
• /
• pp.41-70
• /
• 2003

Many researches on brand equity have been focused in definition about it, factors of it, and the process of formation. Most of them have been used by voluntary production category, as is durable goods or nondurable goods. But this study, using the model is developed by Foote, Cone & Be1ding(FCB) Company, classified four fields, high-low involvement, rationality(rational or sensitive) involvement. The selected goods is a sensitive high involvement(casual wear). This study investigate the effects of brand equity and search the influences of brand equity formation according to factors of marketing mix. To this goals, this study kept a literature survey and a demonstrative research. In literature survey, there are several definitions of brand and brand equity. The research model is derived from selected factors of marketing mix and former study. This study used the regression analysis to verify effects from brand equity through the selected marketing mix. The research data is collected from the capital area. The focus of this study is effects of brand equity according to marketing mix. The followings are results and suggestions of this study. First, in the price factors, the affirmative effects are revealed the perceived quality and the brand awareness in a rational high involvement goods, the perceived quality and the brand associations in a sensitive high involvement goods, all factors of brand equity in a rational low involvement goods, and the perceived quality in a sensitive low involvement goods. As summary, the important characteristics is the price factors to consumers, and consumers recognize that a high price means a high quality. Second, in the store image factors, the affirmative effects are revealed all brand equity factors in a rational high involvement and a sensitive high-low involvement. A good store image incites more interest, contact, and visit from potential consumer. And such store offers more consumer satisfaction, simulates more active and positive conversation to consumers. Third, in advertising spending factors, the affirmative effects are revealed the brand awareness and associations in a rational high involvement and a sensitive high involvement, all brand equity factors in a rational low involvement and a sensitive low involvement. An advertisement increases not only a brand awareness but also strong brand associations. Forth, in price promotion factors, the affirmative effects are revealed the brand associations in a rational high involvement, the negative effects are revealed all brand equity in sensitive high involvement. According the result about the effects of brand royalty through the brand equity factors, a perceived quality and brand associations have positive effects to brand royalty in all factors. Consumers choice a deep perceived quality than other competitive brand. So, brand equity will increase according to a qualitative grade of a perceived brand by consumers. Brand associations represent a quality and a degree of involvement. In conclusion, brand associations and equity have a positive relation each other. According to the analysis results about a brand royalty of selected marketing mix factors, the affirmative effects are revealed the store image and price promotion factors in a rational high involvement, the price and store image in a sensitive high involvement, and the price and advertising spending in a rational low involvement. The results about the affect of selected marketing mix factors according to brand equity, are the perceived quality in a high involvement, and all brand equity factors in a low involvement. The affirmative effects about a store image are revealed all equity factors in high-low involvement. In advertising spending factors, the affirmative effects are revealed the brand awareness and associations in a high involvement goods, and the perceived quality and the brand awareness in a low involvement goods. In price promotion factors, the affirmative effects are revealed the brand awareness in a low involvement goods, and the negative effects are revealed the brand awareness in a high involvement goods. According to a degree of involvement, the results of a brand royalty through a brand equity factors are following. The affirmative effects are revealed the perceived quality and the brand royalty in a high involvement goods, and the brand awareness are revealed a negative effect. The affirmative effects are revealed the perceived Quality and the brand associations in a low involvement goods. So, in a high involvement goods, the brand royalty is built by strong brand associations, but, in a low involvement goods, the brand royalty is built also by a perceived Quality and a brand awareness. This study have some concept of limitation. So, this study presents a future direction of research. First, a future study has to have more deep analysis for this study analyzed through a limited marketing mix factors. Second, a future research has to get mutual effects about brand equity of marketing mix factors for this study has an individual marketing decision factors. Third, for the future, a brand equity needs a research about a several goods such as services, profit or nonprofit, industrial products, culture, and so on. Forth, the research have to diversify a various data for population.