• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
• /
• v.18 no.1
• /
• pp.33-58
• /
• 2008

Previous research has presupposed that the evaluation of consumer who received any recovery after experiencing product failure should be better than the evaluation of consumer who did not receive any recovery. The major purposes of this article are to examine impacts of product defect failures rather than service failures, and to explore effects of recovery on postrecovery product attitudes. First, this article deals with the occurrence of severe and unsevere failure and corresponding service recovery toward tangible products rather than intangible services. Contrary to intangible services, purchase and usage are separable for tangible products. This difference makes it clear that executing an recovery strategy toward tangible products is not plausible right after consumers find out product failures. The consumers may think about backgrounds and causes for the unpleasant events during the time gap between product failure and recovery. The deliberation may dilutes positive effects of recovery efforts. The recovery strategies which are provided to consumers experiencing product failures can be classified into three types. A recovery strategy can be implemented to provide consumers with a new product replacing the old defective product, a complimentary product for free, a discount at the time of the failure incident, or a coupon that can be used on the next visit. This strategy is defined as "a rewarding effort." Meanwhile a product failure may arise in exchange for its benefit. Then the product provider can suggest a detail explanation that the defect is hard to escape since it relates highly to the specific advantage to the product. The strategy may be called as "a strengthening effort." Another possible strategy is to recover negative attitude toward own brand by giving prominence to the disadvantages of a competing brand rather than the advantages of its own brand. The strategy is reflected as "a weakening effort." This paper emphasizes that, in order to confirm its effectiveness, a recovery strategy should be compared to being nothing done in response to the product failure. So the three types of recovery efforts is discussed in comparison to the situation involving no recovery effort. The strengthening strategy is to claim high relatedness of the product failure with another advantage, and expects the two-sidedness to ease consumers' complaints. The weakening strategy is to emphasize non-aversiveness of product failure, even if consumers choose another competitive brand. The two strategies can be effective in restoring to the original state, by providing plausible motives to accept the condition of product failure or by informing consumers of non-responsibility in the failure case. However the two may be less effective strategies than the rewarding strategy, since it tries to take care of the rehabilitation needs of consumers. Especially, the relative effect between the strengthening effort and the weakening effort may differ in terms of the severity of the product failure. A consumer who realizes a highly severe failure is likely to attach importance to the property which caused the failure. This implies that the strengthening effort would be less effective under the condition of high product severity. Meanwhile, the failing property is not diagnostic information in the condition of low failure severity. Consumers would not pay attention to non-diagnostic information, and with which they are not likely to change their attitudes. This implies that the strengthening effort would be more effective under the condition of low product severity. A 2 (product failure severity: high or low) X 4 (recovery strategies: rewarding, strengthening, weakening, or doing nothing) between-subjects design was employed. The particular levels of product failure severity and the types of recovery strategies were determined after a series of expert interviews. The dependent variable was product attitude after the recovery effort was provided. Subjects were 284 consumers who had an experience of cosmetics. Subjects were first given a product failure scenario and were asked to rate the comprehensibility of the failure scenario, the probability of raising complaints against the failure, and the subjective severity of the failure. After a recovery scenario was presented, its comprehensibility and overall evaluation were measured. The subjects assigned to the condition of no recovery effort were exposed to a short news article on the cosmetic industry. Next, subjects answered filler questions: 42 items of the need for cognitive closure and 16 items of need-to-evaluate. In the succeeding page a subject's product attitude was measured on an five-item, six-point scale, and a subject's repurchase intention on an three-item, six-point scale. After demographic variables of age and sex were asked, ten items of the subject's objective knowledge was checked. The results showed that the subjects formed more favorable evaluations after receiving rewarding efforts than after receiving either strengthening or weakening efforts. This is consistent with Hoffman, Kelley, and Rotalsky (1995) in that a tangible service recovery could be more effective that intangible efforts. Strengthening and weakening efforts also were effective compared to no recovery effort. So we found that generally any recovery increased products attitudes. The results hint us that a recovery strategy such as strengthening or weakening efforts, although it does not contain a specific reward, may have an effect on consumers experiencing severe unsatisfaction and strong complaint. Meanwhile, strengthening and weakening efforts were not expected to increase product attitudes under the condition of low severity of product failure. We can conclude that only a physical recovery effort may be recognized favorably as a firm's willingness to recover its fault by consumers experiencing low involvements. Results of the present experiment are explained in terms of the attribution theory. This article has a limitation that it utilized fictitious scenarios. Future research deserves to test a realistic effect of recovery for actual consumers. Recovery involves a direct, firsthand experience of ex-users. Recovery does not apply to non-users. The experience of receiving recovery efforts can be relatively more salient and accessible for the ex-users than for non-users. A recovery effort might be more likely to improve product attitude for the ex-users than for non-users. Also the present experiment did not include consumers who did not have an experience of the products and who did not perceive the occurrence of product failure. For the non-users and the ignorant consumers, the recovery efforts might lead to decreased product attitude and purchase intention. This is because the recovery trials may give an opportunity for them to notice the product failure.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
• /
• v.22 no.4
• /
• pp.7-29
• /
• 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
• /
• v.10 no.5
• /
• pp.37-44
• /
• 2012

In this paper, we investigate several factors that affect the locational decision of discount stores by using previous studies on the marketing area and the location of commercial facilities. We selected 21 primary variables that are expected to influence the decision of store location and, by factor analysis, grouped them into five underlying factors. Among these, the demographic factor, which shows the potential purchasing power level, had the greatest impact on the locational decision for the store. However, we found individual stores positioned according to unique locational characteristics in addition to the demographic factor. It means that we have to additionally consider if the vicinity of the market is based on any physical properties. Many previous studies proposed four decision factors for store location: the economic factor, the demographic factor, the land utilization factor, and traffic factor. However, the fivefold factors-our distinctive contribution-are more concrete and persuasive according to Korean reality. We show that location preference is based on the following criteria: (1) the area is densely populated, (2) houses stand close together, (3) residents have a high income level, (4) road traffic is developed and easy to access, and (5) public transportation is well developed. The demographic factor has the greatest impact on the location of a discount store. The number of households has a greater relevance to the demographic factor than does the individual consumer. Second, discount stores relatively prefer places where houses are located close together because such places offer easy access to the market. Third, a place whose residents have a high income level will be preferred, with its large cars and excellent traffic conditions. Fourth, a location would be highly rated if the roads around commercial facilities are well developed and their accessibility is good. Finally, discount stores must be located close to bus stops because female consumers, including housewives-the most important customers-evaluate stores based on distance. In this research, the variable of consumer attitude and preference was excluded, and the location factors of discount stores were analyzed according to a microscopic view through physical spatial data. In the future, the opening of new discount stores based on the five factors indicated above will require a comparatively shorter time from the first project feasibility analysis. In addition, the result of our study can be applied to the field of public policy for constructing and attracting large-scale distribution facilities.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
• /
• v.22 no.4
• /
• pp.19-43
• /
• 2016

This study examines the causes of the Asian exchange rate crisis and compares it to the European Monetary System crisis. In 1997, emerging countries in Asia experienced financial crises. Previously in 1992, currencies in the European Monetary System had undergone the same experience. This was followed by Mexico in 1994. The objective of this paper lies in the generation of useful insights from these crises. This research presents a comparison of South Korea, United Kingdom and Mexico, and then compares three different models for prediction. Previous studies of economic crisis focused largely on the manual construction of causal models using linear techniques. However, the weakness of such models stems from the prevalence of nonlinear factors in reality. This paper uses a structural equation model to analyze the causes, followed by a neural network model to circumvent the linear model's weaknesses. The models are examined in the context of predicting exchange rates In this paper, data were quarterly ones, and Consumer Price Index, Gross Domestic Product, Interest Rate, Stock Index, Current Account, Foreign Reserves were independent variables for the prediction. However, time periods of each country's data are different. Lisrel is an emerging method and as such requires a fresh approach to financial crisis prediction model design, along with the flexibility to accommodate unexpected change. This paper indicates the neural network model has the greater prediction performance in Korea, Mexico, and United Kingdom. However, in Korea, the multiple regression shows the better performance. In Mexico, the multiple regression is almost indifferent to the Lisrel. Although Lisrel doesn't show the significant performance, the refined model is expected to show the better result. The structural model in this paper should contain the psychological factor and other invisible areas in the future work. The reason of the low hit ratio is that the alternative model in this paper uses only the financial market data. Thus, we cannot consider the other important part. Korea's hit ratio is lower than that of United Kingdom. So, there must be the other construct that affects the financial market. So does Mexico. However, the United Kingdom's financial market is more influenced and explained by the financial factors than Korea and Mexico.

• Journal of Venture Innovation
• /
• v.4 no.3
• /
• pp.109-124
• /
• 2021

This study intends to find out the influence of a consumer's shopping style on impulse buying mediated by sales promotion, based on low-cost cosmetic goods. For the study, pleasure, economical, and convenience shopping styles were set as the independent variables, and impulse buying was set as the dependent variable, and as the mediating variable between the two, sales promotions such as price discount event, free giveaway event, and visit-inducing activity were reviewed. Accordingly, the influence relation of shopping style, sales promotion, and impulse buying were reviewed with hierarchical regression analysis to examine the mutual influence relation. The data for this study employed a structured questionnaire, and 230 copies were collected against men and women in their 20s-30s, who are the main consumers of low-cost cosmetic goods, and 197 faithful responses were analyzed, and the major findings from the analysis results are as follows. First, pleasure-style consumers were found to have influenced impulse buying, while economical-style consumers were found to have a negative influence, and convenience-style was found to have no significant relation. Second, as for the examination of the mediating effect of sales promotion, price discount event, free giveaway event, and visit-inducing activity were found to have a partial mediating effect on the influence of pleasure shopping style on impulse buying, and did not fulfill the economical shopping style mediating effect condition. Also, as convenience shopping style was found to be insignificant towards impulse buying, it was excluded from the mediating effect. Such result is thought to be a useful elementary material for establishing a sales promotion strategy according to shopping styles through the analysis of styles of major consumers in order to increase the sales of businesses. The theoretical and pragmatic implications of such study results were discussed and the future study directions were suggested.

• Journal of Venture Innovation
• /
• v.5 no.3
• /
• pp.71-80
• /
• 2022

The real estate market is an important part of a country's economy and plays a major role in economic growth through the growth of many related industries. Changes in interest rates affect asset prices and have a significant impact on housing prices. This study analyzed housing prices by dividing them into nationwide, local, and Seoul housing prices in order to analyze whether the effect of changes in interest rates on housing prices shows regional differences. The analysis was conducted from the first quarter of 2011 to the fourth quarter of 2021, and was analyzed using the DOLS model. The main analysis results are as follows. First, interest rates were found to have a significant negative effect on national housing prices, and a drop in interest rates significantly increased national housing prices and an increase in interest rates significantly lowered national housing prices. The consumer price index and loan growth rate also had a positive effect on housing prices nationwide, but statistical significance was not high. Second, interest rates had a negative effect on local housing prices, unlike national housing prices, but were not statistically significant. On the other hand, it was found that the consumer price index and loan growth rate had a larger and significant positive effect on local housing prices compared to national housing prices. Finally, it was found that the interest rate had the only significant negative effect on housing prices in Seoul. And this effect was greater and more significant than the effect on national and local housing prices. In the end, it was found that the effect of interest rates on Korean housing prices differs locally. Interest rates have a significant negative effect on national housing prices, and local housing prices, but they are not statistically significant. In addition, the interest rate was found to have the largest and most significant negative effect on housing prices in Seoul. In addition, it was found that there was a difference in the effect of macroeconomic variables on housing prices. This means that there are differences between regions with different factors influencing local and Seoul housing prices, and this point should be considered when drafting and implementing real estate policies.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
• /
• v.23 no.1
• /
• pp.63-71
• /
• 2010

Business entrepreneurs reflect their views of domestic and foreign economic activities on their operation for the growth of their business. The decision, forecasting, and planning based on their economic sentiment affect business operation such as production, investment, and hiring and consequently affect condition of national economy. Business survey index(BSI) is compiled to get the information of business entrepreneurs' economic sentiment for the analysis of business condition. BSI has been used as an important variable in the short-term forecasting models for business cycle analysis, especially during the the period of extreme business fluctuations. Recent financial crisis has arised extreme business fluctuations similar to those caused by currency crisis at the end of 1997, and brought back the importance of BSI as a variable for the economic forecasting. In this paper, the meaning of BSI as an economic sentiment index is reviewed and a GUIDE regression tree is constructed to find out the factors which affect on BSI. The result shows that the variables related to the stability of financial market such as kospi index(Korea composite stock price index) and exchange rate as well as manufacturing operation ratio and consumer goods sales are main factors which affect business entrepreneurs' economic sentiment.

• Culinary science and hospitality research
• /
• v.22 no.3
• /
• pp.240-253
• /
• 2016

The purpose of this study is to predict factors influencing participant demand for the temple stays and to help find alternatives for temple stay marketing strategies. Specifically, the study sought to examine input variables on the visit frequency of temple visitors who partook in temple food. Research subjects were temple stay participants with experience with temple food. Through convenience sampling method, 300 self-administered questionnaires were distributed to participants at 4 temple stays in Seoul. Of the 278 questionnaires collected, 232 (83%) were used for research analysis. Given that the requirement that proper model for analysing the collected data be applied, the Truncated Negative Binomial(TNB) Poisson model, which is useful for analysing count data that are truncated at '0' and overcrowded with a certain value, was selected fort his study. Study results found that, for temple stay food revitalization, the most crucial item for temple food proponents to recognize is natural food ingredients. The degree of affection was higher among respondents over 40 years of groups and with incomes over 40 million won or more than others. In addition, unmarried and male were higher than married and female, and the Christian population in the temple food demand higher impact than Shamanism community. This match should be a priority to establish an in-depth public relations policy of targeted marketing of consumers according to various demographic characteristics. Active and aggressive efforts to expand food inspection are required to promote the healthy image of the temple food to the fragmentation of consumer marketing hierarchy.

• Journal of Family Resource Management and Policy Review
• /
• v.19 no.2
• /
• pp.1-26
• /
• 2015

The purpose of this study was to analyze the quality of life (QoL) of elderly women and the effect of social support on their QoL. The data were used 'urvey on the Elderly in 2011', which was held from 'Ministry of Health & Welfare' and 'Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs'. Among the total 15,146 respondents, 3,880 of elderly women whose age was over 65, and who did not live together with their married children were included in the analysis. Multiple regression analysis and path analysis were used to analyze the research model. The findings were as follows. First, from the fact that the elderly women showed the highest mean in 'contact frequency with friends' among social support, it seemed that the elderly women contacted their friends more than their children in their old age. Among the support types from their children, elderly women received emotional support, physical support, instrumental support in order and irregular cash as a way of economic support. Second, from the regression results, the most critical factor that affected the QoL of elderly women was 'subjective physical condition level' and 'subjective standard of living' comes next. Third, the most important factor was 'subjective standard of living' from path analysis results, and 'subjective physical condition level' and 'total amount of annual income' in order. Also, social supports such as 'phone call contact frequency with children', 'emotional support from children', phone call contact frequency with relatives', 'phone call contact frequency with friends' positively affected the QoL of elderly women. Therefore, raising social supports from children, relatives, and friends positively contributes to improve the QoL of elderly women directly and indirectly. The results show that social supporters, which is a part of the structural aspects of social support, and types of social support, which lies in functional aspects, directly affect QoL of the elderly women and turn out to be factors that improve the QoL as mediating variables. It is concluded that the social supports can be the most important resources that make up declining personal and social resources in old age and maintain the QoL of elderly women.

• Journal of Family Resource Management and Policy Review
• /
• v.16 no.1
• /
• pp.199-227
• /
• 2012

Studies of leisure time generally have been concentrated on the amount of time spent by each family member in Korea. In this study, the shared leisure time among family members in various leisure activities was mainly investigated. Purposes of this study were to describe how family members spent the leisure time together and to investigate the determinants that affected whether or not family shared leisure time together. The data source was the '2009 Time Use Survey' conducted by the Korea National Statistical Office. The person involved in each activity was surveyed for the first time in the survey. The data from 17,470 diaries(10,359 weekdays and 3,549 Sunday) from 8,745 individuals aged from 20 to 59 who had a spouse were analyzed. The descriptive statistics and logistic regressions were used. On average, married couples spent leisure time together with spouses 36 minutes a day on weekdays and 1 hour and 38 minutes on Sunday, respectively. Parent did with preschool children 5 minutes a day on weekdays and 15 minutes on Sunday, respectively. The shared leisure time with other family and relatives was 22 minutes a day on weekdays and 1 hour and 13 minutes on Sunday, respectively. Although there was a wide variation on the shared family leisure time by the types of activities, the main shared leisure activity was using mass media, which accounts for about two third of all shared leisure time together with family. Independent variables, including the age, sex, education level, working hours, personal income, presence of preschool children, marital status, sex role attitude, and dual or single income earner were the significant determinants of family's or couple's parent-preschool children's shared leisure time on weekdays or Sunday. Based on the results of this study, family and leisure policy were suggested to increase active family shared leisure time.