• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
• /
• v.51 no.8
• /
• pp.61-75
• /
• 2001

This study is designed to compare the evaluations of university students on clothing before and after the IMF crisis in Korea. The conclusions of this study are as follows : First, consumers' perceived quality, value and purchase willingness on high price are raised after the IMF crisis in single cue context. Second. consumers' perceived quality, value and purchase willingness on famous brand are raised after the IMF crisis in single cue context. Third, brand has more effect on quality and purchase willingness than price after the IMF crisis. Fourth, consumers' perceived value and purchase willingness get based on the comparison of both pence and brand after the IMF crisis. Fifth, the highest purchase willingness of university students occurs in the multiple cue context of low price and famous brand both before and after the IMF crisis.

• Journal of Distribution Science
• /
• v.12 no.10
• /
• pp.123-128
• /
• 2014

Purpose - The purpose of the study is to reexamine the price fairness as practiced by low cost airlines, as a consumer has to experience such inconveniences as inferior airport transportation, extra fees on in-flight meals, and non-negotiable seats, and consumers evaluate such experiences keeping in mind their total costs. This evaluation includes price fairness and allows a reasonable and overall consideration of factors of low cost airlines. It tries to set up a measurement of the indicators consumers' perceptions of price fairness academically as it adapts price fairness to airline services which are renowned for price volatility. Research design, data, and methodology - The research proposes an alternative pricing strategy for the long term profit of low cost airlines after going over conflicts between the traditional theory of consumers' price perception mechanism and flexible fair policy of low cost airlines. It was meaningful when it relates to the early stage of the business, while it enhances the risks relating to the long term survival of low cost airlines. In addition, it is significant as it highlights the negative influences on consumers' perceptions of price fairness, as low cost airlines run on extremely low cost perspectives. Results - The results of the research provide insight into four perspectives, as consumers' perceptions of price fairness are influenced by the frequency and range of price changes and services. The first perspective is that it would lead to positive price evaluation when a low cost airline cuts prices frequently with little changes than one big change. It also would lead to the same result when it comes to necessary services. The second perspective is that one big increase of price would rather undermine the negative aspects of price changes than those of several smaller ones. The third perspective is that additional services would be good to consumers' perceptions of price fairness as compared to discount benefits with respect to the cost. Finally, a low cost airline should consider that consumers will change airlines or defer their flight schedule if the flight fares increase beyond their limits. Conclusions - Low cost airlines should reconsider their pricing policies for services that were provided free earlier. A consumer would not like discount benefits when made to pay for services that were, for long, free of charge. If a low cost airline can provide services with no charge, it should improve volumes if the costs are standardized and, moreover, should consider the charging fees. Alternatively, a consumer can choose between services and fair discount. Low cost airlines are implementing sales promotion strategies, as the competition is more intense than it used to be. In these days, they should regard services over sales promotion, as consumers may prefer to spend money on good premium services. Some differentiation in services could create a good market position for the airlines and, hence, good financial performance.

• Environmental Analysis Health and Toxicology
• /
• v.25 no.3
• /
• pp.187-195
• /
• 2010

Nanotechnology is the fastest growing area in scientific research and it has important applications in a wide variety of fields. Nevertheless, consumers encountered this new technology without any identification of risks and benefits. Also until now, there are no specific safety evaluation methods for nanotechnology. For this reason, we studied risk communication strategy for nanotechnology to prepare its application in commercialized products on public. A survey was conducted to identify the differences in perception between public (N=110) and expert (N=37) toward applied nanotechnology in food, drugs and cosmetic products. The survey results were used to draw up a risk cognitive map which was introduced by Paul Slovic, and the perception level of public and expert on nanotechnology was evaluated. As a result of the survey, public recognized nanotechnology as "unknown but low dread" risk factor, but expert recognized it as "unknown and high dread" risk factor. These results indicate that there are perception differences between two groups. Several risk communication strategies are reported including care, consensus and risk communication. In the case of nanotechnology, it contains both risks and benefits. Considering the nature of nanotechnology, the "consensus communication" which informs consumers about risks and benefits of issues is the most appropriate strategy.

• Journal of the Korea Fashion and Costume Design Association
• /
• v.18 no.2
• /
• pp.177-190
• /
• 2016

On-line consumer reviews are good references for consumers to evaluate and buy apparel products. The objective of this study is to facilitate communication about performance textiles between consumers and merchandisers who buy and sell apparel products on online. The survey was based on standardizing words used in consumer reviews written after purchase of summer knit t-shirts at internet shopping mall and evaluating the performance textiles including cellulose fibers. We collected reviews of five sorts of the clothing products including cotton/modal, tencel/polyurethane, polyester/rayon, linen, cotton and selected 1000 reviews related to textiles. For classifying each word used in the reviews by the performance textiles, they were quantified applying same standards. The results were as follow: First, the standard for consumer to consider importantly was tactile sensation, appearance, pilling, thickness, dimensional stability in washing. Second, the important category of performance textiles was healthy-comfort and psychological-comfort. Third, there were difference performance textiles for consumer to recognize, e.g. cotton/modal was important to air-permeability, tencel/polyurethane was noticed about tactile sensation, polyester/rayon was perceived about pilling unlike other things, linen had a problem of clothing care-convenience, then cotton was familiar fiber to important for appearance. The last, consumers usually focused on writing the most positive or negative online reviews. Although not familiar with professional terminologies, consumers are sensitive to physical properties of textiles. Therefore, standardizing and evaluating performance textiles are expected to improve satisfaction as providing objective information to consumers considering in buying apparel products at online shopping mall and increase in revenue to manufacturer.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Culture
• /
• v.26 no.4
• /
• pp.331-343
• /
• 2011

A survey of consumer awareness and attitudes was conducted about genetically modified (GM) foods and the labeling regulations. The questionnaires were distributed to 4,620 consumers who lived in a variety of areas in Korea, and 4,076 people responded. The consumers were asked about knowledge, labeling information, and the source of obtaining information about GM foods. More than 11.5% of the consumers had never heard about GM foods and 86.9% of consumers had less than a normal level of knowledge about GM foods. No statistically significant relationship was found between genders, but the teachers group had moderate knowledge (p<0.001). In total, 28.4% of consumers did not know the GMO labeling regulations. They answered that the reason to buy GM food was do not know>nothing wrong>create benefit>think as safe>inexpensive. The answers to the question of what was the first benefit were: solve food shortage>functional and nutritious food>cultivate in bad condition>nothing>various cultivars. They answered that the worst factor was the next generation effect>environmental disruption. Regarding the development of GM food in Korea, males answered do not know>stronglyrecommend>defer>strongly suppress. Female answered: don't know>defer>strongly recommend>strongly suppress. More than half of the respondents did not have much information about GM foods; 88.3% of respondents answered they did not have educational experience about GM food.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
• /
• v.22 no.1
• /
• pp.63-82
• /
• 2016

Individuals gather information online to resolve problems in their daily lives and make various decisions about the purchase of products or services. With the revolutionary development of information technology, Web 2.0 has allowed more people to easily generate and use online reviews such that the volume of information is rapidly increasing, and the usefulness and significance of analyzing the unstructured data have also increased. This paper presents an analysis on the lexical features of expert product reviews to determine their influence on consumers' purchasing decisions. The focus was on how unstructured data can be organized and used in diverse contexts through text mining. In addition, diverse lexical features of expert reviews of contents provided by a third-party review site were extracted and defined. Expert reviews are defined as evaluations by people who have expert knowledge about specific products or services in newspapers or magazines; this type of review is also called a critic review. Consumers who purchased products before the widespread use of the Internet were able to access expert reviews through newspapers or magazines; thus, they were not able to access many of them. Recently, however, major media also now provide online services so that people can more easily and affordably access expert reviews compared to the past. The reason why diverse reviews from experts in several fields are important is that there is an information asymmetry where some information is not shared among consumers and sellers. The information asymmetry can be resolved with information provided by third parties with expertise to consumers. Then, consumers can read expert reviews and make purchasing decisions by considering the abundant information on products or services. Therefore, expert reviews play an important role in consumers' purchasing decisions and the performance of companies across diverse industries. If the influence of qualitative data such as reviews or assessment after the purchase of products can be separately identified from the quantitative data resources, such as the actual quality of products or price, it is possible to identify which aspects of product reviews hamper or promote product sales. Previous studies have focused on the characteristics of the experts themselves, such as the expertise and credibility of sources regarding expert reviews; however, these studies did not suggest the influence of the linguistic features of experts' product reviews on consumers' overall evaluation. However, this study focused on experts' recommendations and evaluations to reveal the lexical features of expert reviews and whether such features influence consumers' overall evaluations and purchasing decisions. Real expert product reviews were analyzed based on the suggested methodology, and five lexical features of expert reviews were ultimately determined. Specifically, the "review depth" (i.e., degree of detail of the expert's product analysis), and "lack of assurance" (i.e., degree of confidence that the expert has in the evaluation) have statistically significant effects on consumers' product evaluations. In contrast, the "positive polarity" (i.e., the degree of positivity of an expert's evaluations) has an insignificant effect, while the "negative polarity" (i.e., the degree of negativity of an expert's evaluations) has a significant negative effect on consumers' product evaluations. Finally, the "social orientation" (i.e., the degree of how many social expressions experts include in their reviews) does not have a significant effect on consumers' product evaluations. In summary, the lexical properties of the product reviews were defined according to each relevant factor. Then, the influence of each linguistic factor of expert reviews on the consumers' final evaluations was tested. In addition, a test was performed on whether each linguistic factor influencing consumers' product evaluations differs depending on the lexical features. The results of these analyses should provide guidelines on how individuals process massive volumes of unstructured data depending on lexical features in various contexts and how companies can use this mechanism from their perspective. This paper provides several theoretical and practical contributions, such as the proposal of a new methodology and its application to real data.

• Journal of Distribution Science
• /
• v.16 no.3
• /
• pp.79-86
• /
• 2018

Purpose - Many retail stores tend to use scarcity-laden message in order to influence consumers, where scarcity refers to insufficiency of product supply or time of availability. For example, inside stores, the displayed products are often accompanied by scarcity message such as 'exclusive offer, limited time only.' According to past research, scarcity has a positive effect on product evaluation, since scarcity can acts as a signal of consumer demand, and thus product quality. Prior studies argue that consumers face a scarce product, they logically infer that other consumers buying the product in large numbers cause the scarcity. We propose that scarcity can be interpreted as a sales tactic artificially created by retail stores in order to increase sales of product. Research design, data, and methodology - We use a persuasion knowledge perspective framework to develop our hypotheses. In the present research, we show that product curation type is a key variable that moderates consumer response to scarcity, and thus the scarcity effect on product evaluation. Results - In this research, we showed when scarcity-laden message was used inside the store using consumer-centric curation message, scarcity had a positive effect on product evaluation. In contrast, when scarcity-laden message was used inside the store using marketer-centric curation message, the positive of scarcity message on product evaluation was diluted. Conclusions - Our study makes two important contributions to the literature on consumer response to scarcity. First, we identify a variable - namely, product curation type - that determines when either 'scarcity = good' or 'scarcity = marketing tactic' interpretation is likely to be dominant. Second, we cite persuasion knowledge perspective to explain the moderating function of product curation type in a retail store-related scarcity context. This research is relevant to practitioners, such as brand manager, retail environment manager, and advertising agencies, for the effective use for the scarcity-laden message in retail. The proposed moderator can operate in many real-life situations in retail where consumers are exposed to scarcity. And curation message related to scarcity has been facilitated by the inner-retail activities. These factors of the marketplace indicate that the boundary conditions of scarcity can have a significant effect on real-life consumer judgment.

• Asia Marketing Journal
• /
• v.12 no.1
• /
• pp.51-79
• /
• 2010

This study is based on recent advances in celebrity traits and self-determination researches to address how consumers develop the strong attachment to a "star brand," and the effect of consumer's attachment to star brand on evaluation of product brand sponsored by the star. We use the consumers' need satisfaction and star traits as major causal factors that influence consumer's attachment to a star brand. Specifically this article uses autonomy need, relatedness need, competence need as the dimensions of need satisfaction and expertness, trustworthiness, likeability, and similarity as the key star traits. The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of these factors on the consumer's attachment to star brand and how consumer's evaluation of product brand sponsored by star is moderated by the fitness level of between the image of star brand and the image of sponsored product brand. To collect the data, survey was taken in a University located in Incheon. Collected data are analysed using SPSS 15.0 and AMOS 7.0. The results show that when the star brand is perceived as more trustworthy and likeable, and satisfies autonomy need and relatedness need, the consumer is more likely to become strongly attached to him or her. The hypothesis that consumer's attachment to star brand will have the positive influence on the evaluation of product brand sponsored by star is supported. And hypothesis that consumer's attitude to a sponsored product brand is moderated by the fitness level of between the image of star brand and the image of sponsored product brand is also supported. The empirical results imply that star brand to which consumers are attached may have the significant positive impact on the consumers' evaluation process of endorsed product brand and purchase behavior, and that marketers should consider need dimensions which target consumers want to satisfy and the fitness level of between the image of star brand being considered as endorser and the image of product brand.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
• /
• v.16 no.11
• /
• pp.8001-8011
• /
• 2015

This study aims to find evaluative criteria of quality on the organic clothes with college student consumers, categorize them, establish the basis of evaluation criteria, and examine the roles of each attribute according to their demographical characteristics and the association between their quality evaluation and their purchase intention. College students' evaluative criteria of quality factors of organic clothes were three factor; "aesthetic symbolism", "mainterance efficiency", and "functionality". As a result, first this study showed significant differences from the evaluation criteria of organic clothes in sex, major and pocket money among demographical characteristics Second, this study found that college student consumers' experience of purchasing organic clothes considered "aesthetic symbolism", "mainterance efficiency", and "functionality" more important compared to non-purchase group. Third, it was found that there might be differences between future purchase intention group and non-repurchase intention group according to evaluation standard of organic clothes. There was significant differences in "functionality" between the two groups.

• Proceedings of the SCSK Conference
• /
• 2003.09a
• /
• pp.142-160
• /
• 2003

Most consumers have noted hair damage following coloring treatments. Proper evaluation of hair bleaching products must be performed using quantitative assessments of hair damage, though they are difficult, because of the slight fluctuations in hair composition. In the present study, we utilized a sensitive evaluation method for hair damage and found that the amount of soluble protein fraction extracted from hair under a reducing condition, termed labile protein, dramatically increased after bleaching.(omitted)