• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.11 no.8
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• pp.7-19
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• 2020

Purpose: Prior studies rarely investigated the effects of the Word of Mouse (WoM) information on consumers' motivation and willingness to purchase a product. Furthermore, few scholars have studied how word-of-mouth information works and they fail to find consistent results. Research design, data and methodology: This study uses a multivariate regression model to investigate the influence of WoM on consumer attitudes and consumer decision-making. It categorizes the quality of WoM into source level and acceptance level, to analyze its influence from a new perspective. A total of 400 surveys were completed, resulting in 336 usable questionnaires for analysis. It was collected in 14 cities from all regions in China. This study constructs a theoretical model of WoM influence on consumers' purchase willingness based on a systematic review of the related literature on WoM quality, perceived value, customer trust, and consumers' purchase willingness. Results: Empirical results reveal that the Internet WoM (consumer's source level and acceptance level) indirectly affects consumer behavior by influencing consumer attitudes. Conclusions: This study provides practical significance and value for merchants to develop better WoM marketing and to establish the reliability of WoM websites. Companies should consider online WoM from the perspective of consumers, thereby improving existing marketing strategies.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.1-13
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• 2010

This study analyzes the innovation process of the value chain in the fashion industry. It examines the differences between traditional and FF-based methods that include value chain processes such as design, production, and distribution-sales process. In the literature review and case studies, general propositions were drawn from each innovative stage by a comparison analysis. First, design speed is the main factor to explain the impact of IT in the design process. Second, small quantity batch production becomes main stream by the adoption of a computer-integrated manufacturing system in the production process. Third, cost reduction and speedup improvement are results of innovation in the distribution process. Last, a customized interface provides important information that can integrate the value chain and make useful customer relationships in the sales process. Fast fashion is the best product of these procedural innovations in the overall value chain. Consequently, this study confirmed that the general propositions referred above were acceptable and adaptable in the case of ZARA in terms of fast fashion strategy.

• Korean Management Science Review
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.1-17
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• 2004

A separate and distinct interaction with both the actual e-vendor and with its IT web site interface is at the heart of online shopping. Previous research has established, accordingly, that online purchase intention is the product of customer assessments of IT itself, specifically its perceived usefulness and ease-of-use(TAM). Since perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use are such a fundamental driver of usage intentions, it is important to understand the determinants of this construct and how their influence changes over the voluntariness towards the usage intention. The reason for voluntariness as a moderating variable is that it had the serious effect to the motivating in the making willingness of the internet shopping-mall usage. A better understanding of the determinants of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use to the usage intention would enable us to design web site interventions that would increase user acceptance and usage of internet shopping-mall. Therefore, the goal of the present research is to extend TAM to include additional key determinants of TAM and to understand how the effects of these determinants change with the voluntariness of the usage intention of the internet shopping-mall.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.71-95
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• 2006

In recent, T-commerce is widely dispersed as alternative type of commerce. It is forecasted that t-commerce system is used more than e-commerce system. Therefore more and more t-commerce-related industries are also recognizing that t-commerce is a critical business model. It is needed to understand the concept of t-commerce and develop the t-commerce marketing strategy. CEO analyses consumer's behaviors according to the data about buyers and applies the advantage of t-commerce to the communication with customers. This t-commerce system plays an important role in maximizing customer satisfaction and affecting their intention to reuse it. Therefore this paper attempts to identify T-commerce critical success factors and divide between use-intention group and unuse-intention group by taking out a discriminant function by the discriminant analysis. This lays a foundation in developing T-commerce strategy. According to the discriminant function extracted, convenience factor, amusement factor, system quality factor, product perception factor are significant in the sequence of influential degree. However, usefulness factor and speedy connection factor are not significant. In result, the target hitting rate is 77.9% in the first unuse-intention group and it is 95.2% in the second use-intention group. The total discriminant target hitting rate is computed to higher value, 86.55%. The statistic package, SPSS 12.0, is used to survey and analyse data and test the hypothesis. The validity and reliability of variables are verified by both reliability analysis and factor analysis. The discriminant analysis is used to tell the difference between use-intention group and unuse-intention group.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.18 no.11
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• pp.15-22
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• 2020

Purpose: A marketing strategy for private institutions requires marketers to leverage consumer behaviors and educational psychologies when advertising and promoting product portfolios. Indeed, understanding consumers can make marketers more effective, and the purpose of this research is to tackle private institutions' education marketing by combining marketing theories and learning theories. Research design, data and methodology: The content analysis used in this study will be suitable because there exists numerous prior studies regarding marketing strategy and educational theories. Therefore, the current author could obtain and collect adequate textual facts from much of the literature review. Results: Marketing strategies that are mixed with educational theories increase consumer enrolment due to perceived usefulness, and this implies that an adequate marketing model could help improve sustainability and income as a result of enrollment in private educational institutions. The research also identified that marketing is connected to psychology and that marketers can exploit educational and psychological theories to increase successful enrolment in private educational institutions. Conclusions: Most importantly, the target market for private educational institutions is diverse, and institutions can use direct marketing to appeal to specific audiences. Also, the research implies that diversification strategies can increase enrolment if marketers exploit behavioral learning theories in the marketing process.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.3
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• pp.257-285
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• 1999

Korea Postal Service(KPS) nowadays lies in competitive environment with alternative business such as door-to-door delivery service. Customers began to complain about postal service quality and ask the government to reform a public firm through management innovation. But, Korea Postal Service has not met the break-even point between it's revenue and expenditure because the service is under the government system and cannot independently make major decisions on products, pricing, services, personnel management, financial policies and etc. The objective of this study is to provide marketing planners and practitioners with some guidelines when they establish marketing strategies and to help marketers on theories and practical instructions about postal service marketing when they interact with customers. I. A field survey on both customer satisfaction and internal staff satisfaction was conducted to get some ideas for the marketing strategy planning. II. Practical guidelines and instructions were made for marketers to communicate with customers in various areas such as pricing, product, service demand, marketing channel, promotion, and etc. III. Some suggestions on marketing policies for planners and mangers in the marketing strategy were described including personnel resource as well as physical resource. IV. Special issues on small packet market and direct mail market were discussed and some alternative solutions were proposed. V. Database marketing strategy was emphasized to get new business opportunities such as direct mail, and to provide differential services to customers as much as their contribution into the profitability for KPS. VI. Cyber Post Office should be constructed on Internet to provide new services which are combined with physical material flow and information technologies.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.18
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• pp.115-132
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• 2006

The main findings of this study are summarized as follows; 1) For medium-small size Family Restaurant(FR) in the FR market, nowadays, survival is the key issue. If the medium-small size FR is to survive and continue to grow under this competitive environment, it must pursued the efficiency of management with niche marketing strategy. 2) This study is to describe the niche marketing strategy for medium-small size FR. Strategic niche marketing must be based on the target market, market positioning and strategic marketing mix. 3) Medium-small size FR needs to develop the marketing mix factors for the niche marketing strategy. It needs to make customers understand what the FR differs from current and potential competitors. Essentially the medium-small size FR must take a competitive advantage. Hence it will appeal to a substantial number of the segments customers. 4) In using niche marketing strategy, a medium-small size FR must establish the objectives, select the tools, develop the decisions on product differentiation, market segmentation and positioning under various strategic niche marketing factors 5) By carrying out the niche marketing strategy on the target market, customer's desire can be further fulfilled. When management efficiency is improved, we can better cope with changing environment.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.16 no.11
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• pp.3723-3737
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• 2022

Google Play is one of the largest Android phone app markets and it contains both free and paid apps. It provides a variety of categories for every target user who has different needs and purposes. The customer's rate every product based on their experience of apps and based on the average rating the position of an app in these arch varies. Fraudulent behaviors emerge in those apps which incorporate search rank maltreatment and malware proliferation. To distinguish the fraudulent behavior, a novel framework is structured that finds and uses follows left behind by fraudsters, to identify both malware and applications exposed to the search rank fraud method. This strategy correlates survey exercises and remarkably joins identified review relations with semantic and behavioral signals produced from Google Play application information, to distinguish dubious applications. The proposed model accomplishes 90% precision in grouping gathered informational indexes of malware, fakes, and authentic apps. It finds many fraudulent applications that right now avoid Google Bouncers recognition technology. It also helped the discovery of fake reviews using the reviewer relationship amount of reviews which are forced as positive reviews for each reviewed Google play the android app.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.111-133
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• 2010

Marketing financial services used to be easier. Today, the competition in financial services is fierce. Not only has the competition become more intense, financial services have also changed structurally. In an environment with various customer needs and severe competitions, the marketing in financial services industry is getting more difficult and more important than before. However, there are still not enough studies on financial services marketing in Korea whereas lots of research papers have been published frequently in some international journals. The purpose of this paper is (1)to review the literature on financial services marketing, (2)to investigate current marketing activities based on in-depth interview with financial marketing managers in Korea, and (3)to suggest some implications for future research on the financial services marketing. Financial products are not consumer products. In fact, they are not products at all in the way product marketing is usually described. Nor are they altogether like services. The financial industry operates in a unique way, and its marketing tasks are correspondingly complex. However, the literature review shows that there has been a lack of basic studies which dealt with inherent characteristics of financial services marketing compared to the research on marketing in other industries. Many studies in domestic marketing journals have so far focused only on the general customer behaviors and the special issues in some financial industries. However, for more effective financial services marketing, we have to answer following questions. Is there any difference between financial service marketing and consumer packaged goods marketing? What are the differences between the financial services marketing and other services marketing such as education and health services? Are there different ways of marketing among banks, securities firms, insurance firms, and credit card companies? In other words, we need more detailed research as well as basic studies about the financial services marketing. For example, we need concrete definitions of financial services marketing, bank marketing, securities firm marketing, and etc. It is also required to compare the characteristics of each marketing within the financial services industry. The products sold in each market have different characteristics such as duration and degree of risk-taking. It means that there are sub-categories in financial services marketing. We have to consider them in the future research on the financial services marketing. It is also necessary to study customer decision making process in the financial markets. There have been little research on how customers search and process information, compare alternatives, make final decision, and repeat their choices. Because financial services have some unique characteristics, we need different understandings in the customer behaviors compared to the behaviors in other service markets. And also considering the rapid growth in financial markets and upcoming severe competition between domestic and global financial companies, it is time to start more systematic and detailed research on financial services marketing in Korea. In the second part of this paper, I analyzed the results of in-depth interview with 20 marketing managers of financial services companies in Korea. As a result, I found that the role of marketing departments in Korean financial companies are mainly focused on the short-term activities such as sales support, promotion, and CRM data analysis although the size and history of marketing departments to some extent show a sign of maturity. Most companies established official marketing departments before 2001. Average number of employees in a marketing department is about 58. However, marketing managers in eight companies(40% of the sample) still think that the purpose of marketing is only to support and manage general sales activities. It shows that some companies have sales-oriented concept rather than marketing-oriented concept. I also found three key words which marketing managers think importantly in financial services markets. They are (1)Trust in customer relationship, (2)Brand differentiation, and (3)Rapid response to customer needs. 50% of the sample support that "Trust" is the most important key word in the financial services marketing. It is interesting that 80% of banks and securities companies think that "Trust" is the most important thing, whereas managers in credit card companies consider "Rapid response to customer needs" as the most important key word in their market. In addition, there are different problems recognition of marketing managers depending on the types of financial industries they belong to. For example, in the case of banks and insurance companies, marketing managers consider "a lack of communication with other departments" as the most serious problem. On the other hand, in the case of securities firms, "a lack of utilization of customer data" is the most serious problem. These results imply that there are different important factors for the customer satisfaction depending on the types of financial industries, and managers have to consider them when marketing financial products in more effective ways. For example, It will be necessary for marketing managers to study different important factors which affect customer satisfaction, repeat purchase, degree of risk-taking, and possibility of cross-selling according to the types of financial industries. I also suggested six hypothetical propositions for the future research.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.181-201
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• 2006

As the Internet spreads, many people have interests in e-CRM and product recommender systems, one of e-CRM applications. Among various approaches for recommendation, collaborative filtering and content-based approaches have been investigated and applied widely. Despite their popularity, traditional recommendation approaches have some limitations. They require at least one purchase transaction per user. In addition, they don't utilize much information such as demographic and specific personal profile information. This study suggests new hybrid recommendation model using two data mining techniques, association rule and classification, as well as intelligent agent to overcome these limitations. To validate the usefulness of the model, it was applied to the real case and the prototype web site was developed. We assessed the usefulness of the suggested recommendation model through online survey. The result of the survey showed that the information of the recommendation was generally useful to the survey participants.