• Journal of Service Research and Studies
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.21-36
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• 2021

This study investigated the means-end chain theory more concretely through the APT hard laddering technique. This is carrying out a questionnaire survey targeting users by hair salon type, and the items drawn from the qualitative laddering technique are applied. The technique is a comparative analysis of each attribute, consequences, and value item by analyzing each step's questions. The results are as follows. First, hairdresser's ability, acceptance of individual-customized opinions, and cheap price were the most mentioned items in the selection attributes. As for the consequences items, image transformation, neatness, novelty, and psychological stability were drawn in order. The items indicated as important among the value items were satisfaction, followed by happiness, confidence, beauty, and bond. Second, the remarkable selection attributes, irrelevant of hair salon type, was revealed as hairdresser's ability and the key values pursued when using a hair salon were drawn as satisfaction, confidence, and beauty. From this result, it was found that meeting the desire of consumers using hair salons can be linked with ultimately pursued values. It was also verified that partial differences were shown by hair salon type and this meant that consumers' desire and expected benefits were different by hair salon type. Although this study drew value perception through comparison with hair salon types based on the means-end chain theory, it was confirmed that the most important selection attribute was hairdresser's ability and they select and use hair salons to gain satisfaction and confidence.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.39-48
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• 2011

One of the major reasons for fierce competition among firms is that they strive to increase their own market shares in the same market with similar and apparently undifferentiated products in terms of quality and perceived benefit. Due to such changes in the marketing environment, differentiated after-sales service and diversified promotion strategies have become more important in the race to gain a competitive advantage. Price discount is one of the popular promotion strategies that most retailers use, especially to increase sales, but offering a price discount does not always lead to the expected result. If marketers apply an identical price-promotion strategy without considering the characteristic differences in products and consumer preferences, the discounted price itself may make people skeptical about the quality of the product. Moreover, the changes in perceived value may appear differently depending on factors such as consumer involvement. This implies that variables such as the level of consumer involvement, brand loyalty, and external reference prices, in reality, would have different effects on how consumers perceive the value of price discounts. The variables that affect consumers' perceived values and buying decisions are diverse and complicated. Several studies have examined the effects of such variables as external reference price, selling price, and brand on consumers' perceived value of products. Results have not shown consistent patterns. Therefore, we must note that the factors affecting consumers' value perceptions and buying behaviors are diverse and that the results of studies on the same dependent variable come out differently depending on what that variable is. This study focused on the level of consumer involvement as a salient variable that supposedly affects the perceived value of a product, willingness to buy, and search intentions. We tried to examine whether a price discount affects the perceived value-such as perceived acquisition value and perceived transaction value-in different ways depending on the level of consumer involvement. In addition, we proposed managerial implications that marketers need to consider as a whole, for instance, product attributes, brand loyalty, and involvement and then established a differentiated pricing strategy, case by case, in order to effectively enhance consumers' perceived values. As a result, we found that perceived transaction value positively affects perceived acquisition value and when discounting the price of a high-involvement product enhances the consumer's willingness to buy, but perceived acquisition value does not affect the search intentions significantly. In the case of discounting prices of low-involvement products, on the other hand, the perceived transaction value has a positive effect on the willingness to buy, but the negative effect of perceived acquisition value on the search intentions was not significant. We suppose that people doubt a product's quality because of a declined perceived quality derived from a price discount. Even though the price discount enhanced the transaction value, people eventually increased their level of searching for additional product information. From the results of this study, we suggest that marketers ought to establish an appropriate value-enhancing strategy based on the understanding of which perceived value consumers rely on more when they conduct purchasing behavior because consumers perceive the degree of importance of acquisition value or transaction value differently, depending on their level of involvement.

• Korean Institute of Interior Design Journal
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.88-96
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• 2018

The income level of people in South Korea has risen as the gross national income per capita reached the milestone of 30,000 dollars. More and more consumers try to change their houses according to their tastes just like they express themselves through clothes, bags, and other fashion items, thus pursuing value-based consumption. The changes to the housing culture including the greater percentage of one- or two-person households and the growing trend of lease and monthly rent have made consumers increase their demands for products to express their lifestyles. As a result, global lifestyle shops with characteristic and diverse concepts entered the South Korean market and were joined by South Korean fashion brands, large-sized stores, department stores, and fancy stationery manufacturers, which launched their own brands, in the expansion of lifestyle shops across the nation. Lifestyle shops have a couple of unique attributes including the relatively clear selection of target consumers and a clear set of VMD strategies accordingly. Based on a judgment that there was cost differentiation among brands, the investigator categorized the comparison and analysis criteria into high, middle, and low prices to apply case analysis. This study set out to analyze VMD strategies for spatial composition through cost differentiation among lifestyle shops, take the results into total consideration, and propose an effective and competitive VMD strategy for lifestyle shops through spatial composition elements.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Culture
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• v.38 no.6
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• pp.415-424
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• 2023

This study was undertaken to provide basic data to aid product development and marketing by identifying purchasing behaviors and performing Important Performance Analysis (IPA) according to the consumption values of rice cakes. This study was conducted on 426 consumers who purchased rice cakes. Analysis was performed to determine general characteristics, consumption behaviors, preference for rice cakes, material preferences for rice cake development, need for rice cake development, and importance and satisfaction when selecting rice cakes. Cluster analysis classified consumption values into three clusters. The high and middle consumption value groups contained the greatest proportions of consumers aged over fifty. The high and medium consumption value groups preferred rice cakes more than the low consumption value group. Higher rice cake consumption value was positively associated with the greater preference for rice cakes. Furthermore, the perceived need to develop rice cakes was greatest in the high consumption value group. In addition, importance and satisfaction were positively associated with consumption value. IPA analysis showed that the attributes that require continuous attention because of their contributions to importance and satisfaction were taste, quantity, and hygiene. Different rice cake marketing and product development strategies are required for different consumption values.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.493-513
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• 2014

With the development of related technologies, Location-Based Services (LBS) are growing fast and being used in many ways. Past LBS studies have focused on adoption of LBS because of the fact that LBS users have privacy concerns regarding revealing their location information. Meanwhile, the number of LBS users and revenues from LBS are growing rapidly because users can get some benefits by revealing their location information. Little research has been done on how LBS affects consumers' information search behavior in product purchase. The purpose of this paper is examining the effect of LBS information filtering on buyers' uncertainty and their information search behavior. When consumers purchase a product, they try to reduce uncertainty by searching information. Generally, there are two types of uncertainties - knowledge uncertainty and choice uncertainty. Knowledge uncertainty refers to the lack of information on what kinds of alternatives are available in the market and/or their important attributes. Therefore, consumers having knowledge uncertainty will have difficulties in identifying what alternatives exist in the market to fulfil their needs. Choice uncertainty refers to the lack of information about consumers' own preferences and which alternative will fit in their needs. Therefore, consumers with choice uncertainty have difficulties selecting best product among available alternatives.. According to economics of information theory, consumers narrow the scope of information search when knowledge uncertainty is high. It is because consumers' information search cost is high when their knowledge uncertainty is high. If people do not know available alternatives and their attributes, it takes time and cognitive efforts for them to acquire information about available alternatives. Therefore, they will reduce search breadth. For people with high knowledge uncertainty, the information about products and their attributes is new and of high value for them. Therefore, they will conduct searches more in-depth because they have incentive to acquire more information. When people have high choice uncertainty, people tend to search information about more alternatives. It is because increased search breadth will improve their chances to find better alternative for them. On the other hand, since human's cognitive capacity is limited, the increased search breadth (more alternatives) will reduce the depth of information search for each alternative. Consumers with high choice uncertainty will spend less time and effort for each alternative because considering more alternatives will increase their utility. LBS provides users with the capability to screen alternatives based on the distance from them, which reduces information search costs. Therefore, it is expected that LBS will help users consider more alternatives even when they have high knowledge uncertainty. LBS provides distance information, which helps users choose alternatives appropriate for them. Therefore, users will perceive lower choice uncertainty when they use LBS. In order to test the hypotheses, we selected 80 students and assigned them to one of the two experiment groups. One group was asked to use LBS to search surrounding restaurants and the other group was asked to not use LBS to search nearby restaurants. The experimental tasks and measures items were validated in a pilot experiment. The final measurement items are shown in Appendix A. Each subject was asked to read one of the two scenarios - with or without LBS - and use a smartphone application to pick a restaurant. All behaviors on smartphone were recorded using a recording application. Search breadth was measured by the number of restaurants clicked by each subject. Search depths was measured by two metrics - the average number of sub-level pages each subject visited and the average time spent on each restaurant. The hypotheses were tested using SPSS and PLS. The results show that knowledge uncertainty reduces search breadth (H1a). However, there was no significant correlation between knowledge uncertainty and search depth (H1b). Choice uncertainty significantly reduces search depth (H2b), but no significant relationship was found between choice uncertainty and search breadth (H2a). LBS information filtering significantly reduces the buyers' choice uncertainty (H4) and reduces the negative relationship between knowledge uncertainty and search breadth (H3). This research provides some important implications for service providers. Service providers should use different strategies based on their service properties. For those service providers who are not well-known to consumers (high knowledge uncertainty) should encourage their customers to use LBS. This is because LBS would increase buyers' consideration sets when the knowledge uncertainty is high. Therefore, less known services have chances to be included in consumers' consideration sets with LBS. On the other hand, LBS information filtering decrease choice uncertainty and the near service providers are more likely to be selected than without LBS. Hence, service providers should analyze geographically approximate competitors' strength and try to reduce the gap so that they can have chances to be included in the consideration set.

• Archives of design research
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• v.19 no.4 s.66
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• pp.5-16
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• 2006

This research premises that design failure in the market can stem partially from the gap between designer's communication intension through design and consumer's signification for design. Therefore, it's necessary that designers should examine and understand consumer's signification process for design factors or overall design images that they consider in the design process. For this, this research suggests that understanding consumer's signification process is possible by performing value categorization, consumer segmentation, value identification of main target consumers and relationship examination between value of target consumers and design attributes based on Means-End model by reviewing various theoretical backgrounds. In addition, this research suggests contents and methods for performing each step of understanding consumer's signification process. Also, Laddering was suggested as a method for the study and a case study was performed by it. Finally this research claims that understanding consumer's signification process can be one of the methods that decrease failure possibility rather increase success possibility of design in the market.

• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.123-146
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• 2017

The information that consumers share in the SNS (Social Networking Service) has a great influence on the purchase of consumers. Therefore, it is necessary to pay attention to new research methodology and advertising strategy using Social Big Data. In this context, the purpose of this study is to quantitatively analyze customer value through Social Big Data. In this study, we analyzed the value structure of consumers for the three smartphone brands through text mining and positive/negative image analysis. Analysis result, it was possible to distinguish the emotional aspects (sensitivity) and rational aspects (rationality) for customer value per brand. In the case of the Galaxy S7 and iPhone 6S, emotional aspects were important before the launch, but the rational aspects was important after release date. On the other hand, in the case of the LG G5, emotional aspects were important before and after launch. We can propose two core advertising strategies based on analyzed consumer value. When developing advertising strategy in the case of the Galaxy S7, there is a need to emphasize the rational aspects of product attributes and differentiated functions. In the case of the LG G5, it is necessary to consider the emotional aspects of happiness, excitement, pleasure, and fun that are felt by using products in advertising strategy. As a result, this study will provide a good standard for actual advertising strategy through consumer value analysis. Advertising strategies are primarily driven by intuition or experience. Therefore, it is important to develop advertising strategies by analyzing consumer value through social big data analysis.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.35 no.7
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• pp.761-774
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• 2011

This study investigated the consumer review information considered important by consumers when making a purchase decision to buy apparel products online. Data were collected through focus group interviews. Eleven females in their 20s and 30s, who have extensive experience in reading consumer reviews posted on online apparel stores, participated in the study. The consumer review information considered important by participants is the information related to seven product attributes (size, fabric, design, color, sewing, price, and country of origin), seven benefits (functional, financial, esthetic, emotional, social, utilitarian benefits, and product value compared to price) of the apparel product and four store attributes (return/refund, delivery, reputation/credibility, and customer service). The findings from the study can serve as an important tool in developing survey questions in order to evaluate the quality of consumer review information and help online retailers plan methods to improve the quality of reviews.

• Nutrition Research and Practice
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.122-135
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• 2021

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to measure consumer acceptance of edible insect foods (EIFs) while applying the extended theory of planned behavior (ETPB). Insects as food have attracted interest as potential possible sources of nutrition for the future. This study investigated consumers' perception toward insect food and future purchase behaviors. SUBJECTS/METHODS: A survey was conducted among citizens of Korea. About two thirds of respondents had tried an EIF previously, and the mean value for food neophobia was 3.1 on a 5-point Likert scale. Respondents were divided into 2 groups of those experienced with EIFs and those not and by level of food neophobia. An independent t-test, multiple regression and descriptive analyses were conducted on the data. RESULTS: The primary reason for not eating EIFs was that their insect form induced disgust. Comparisons of ETPB attributes by experience with EIFs showed significant differences between groups for food neophobia, subjective norm, attitude, and behavioral intention. In addition, significant differences were found for subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, attitude, and behavioral intention between 2 neophobia groups. Finally, the results of measuring the relationships between ETPB attributes and behavioral intention showed only subjective norm and attitude affected behavioral intention. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that enhanced subjective norms producing a publicly accepted EIFs environment would help encourage the purchase of EIFs. The results of this study can help the development of EIF products for future food markets.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.185-190
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• 2022

Open data has a lot of economic value. Not only Korea, but many other countries are doing their best to make various policies and efforts to expand and utilize open data. However, although Korea has a large amount of data, the data is not utilized effectively. Thus, attempts to utilize those data should be made in various industries. In particular, in the fashion industry, exchange and refund problems are the most common due to unpredictable consumers. Better feedback is necessary for service providers to solve this problem. We want to solve it by showing improved images of dissatisfactions along with user reviews including consumer needs. In this paper, user reviews are analyzed on online shopping mall websites to identify consumer needs, and product attributes are defined by utilizing the attributes of K-fashion data. The users' request is defined as a dissatisfaction attribute, and labeling data with the corresponding attribute is searched. The users' request is provided to the service provider in forms of text data or attributes, as well as an image to help improve the product.