• Journal of Korean Home Economics Education Association
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• v.17 no.4 s.38
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• pp.101-115
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• 2005

The purpose of this research was to develop and applicate In based teaching$\cdot$learning process plan for Environmentally friendly Housing. The 3 main stages of process were used: analyses, planning & development, and application & evaluation. Three teaching subjects were selected to teach Environmentally friendly housing in the analysis stage. The webhard learning environment was consisted of contents and various materials such as digital video, PPT, group activity, discussion, individual and group reporting forms, and questions. The number of 101 high school students participated for the application stage during september 22-27, 2003. Most of all students evaluated very positively the various aspects of contents as well as LT cooperative learning methods md the web based learning environment. They strongly expressed to practice the practical ways of Environmentally friendly housing learned in the class in the future. The results imply that the contents and In teaching learning plan developed in this study seem to be adequate to be included in the regular text.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.103-128
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• 2013

When a consumer needs a product or service and multiple sellers are available online, the process of selecting a seller to buy online from is complex since the process involves many behavioral dimensions that have to be taken into account. As a part of this selection process, consumers may set minimum trust expectation that can be used to screen out less trustworthy sellers. In the previous research, the level of consumers' trust expectation has been anchored on two important factors: product involvement and perceived risk. Product involvement refers to the extent to which a consumer perceives a specific product important. Thus, the higher product involvement may result in the higher trust expectation in sellers. On the other hand, other related studies found that when consumers perceived a higher level of risk (e.g., credit card fraud risk), they set higher trust expectation as well. While abundant research exists addressing the relationship between product involvement and perceived risk, little attention has been paid to the integrative view of the link between the two constructs and their impacts on the trust expectation. The present paper is a step toward filling this research gap. The purpose of this paper is to understand the process by which a consumer chooses an online merchant by examining the relationships among product involvement, perceived risk, trust expectation, and intention to buy from an e-tailer. We specifically focus on the mediating role of perceived risk in the relationships between enduring product involvement and the trust expectation. That is, we question whether product involvement affects the trust expectation directly without mediation or indirectly mediated by perceived risk. The research model with four hypotheses was initially tested using data gathered from 635 respondents through an online survey method. The structural equation modeling technique with partial least square was used to validate the instrument and the proposed model. The results showed that three out of the four hypotheses formulated were supported. First, we found that the intention to buy from a digital storefront is positively and significantly influenced by the trust expectation, providing support for H4 (trust expectation ${\rightarrow}$ purchase intention). Second, perceived risk was found to be a strong predictor of trust expectation, supporting H2 as well (perceived risk ${\rightarrow}$ trust expectation). Third, we did not find any evidence of direct influence of product involvement, which caused H3 to be rejected (product involvement ${\rightarrow}$ trust expectation). Finally, we found significant positive relationship between product involvement and perceived risk (H1: product involvement ${\rightarrow}$ perceived risk), which suggests that the possibility of complete mediation of perceived risk in the relationship between enduring product involvement and the trust expectation. As a result, we conducted an additional test for the mediation effect by comparing the original model with the revised model without the mediator variable of perceived risk. Indeed, we found that there exists a strong influence of product involvement on the trust expectation (by intentionally eliminating the variable of perceived risk) that was suppressed (i.e., mediated) by the perceived risk in the original model. The Sobel test statistically confirmed the complete mediation effect. Results of this study offer the following key findings. First, enduring product involvement is positively related to perceived risk, implying that the higher a consumer is enduringly involved with a given product, the greater risk he or she is likely to perceive with regards to the online purchase of the product. Second, perceived risk is positively related to trust expectation. A consumer with great risk perceptions concerning the online purchase is likely to buy from a highly trustworthy online merchant, thereby mitigating potential risks. Finally, product involvement was found to have no direct influence on trust expectation, but the relationship between the two constructs was indirect and mediated by the perceived risk. This is perhaps an important theoretical integration of two separate streams of literature on product involvement and perceived risk. The present research also provides useful implications for practitioners as well as academicians. First, one implication for practicing managers in online retail stores is that they should invest in reducing the perceived risk of consumers in order to lower down the trust expectation and thus increasing the consumer's intention to purchase products or services. Second, an academic implication is that perceived risk mediates the relationship between enduring product involvement and trust expectation. Further research is needed to elaborate the theoretical relationships among the constructs under consideration.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.29-52
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• 2012

Consumers differ in the way they make a purchase. An audio mania would willingly make a bold, yet serious, decision to buy a top-of-the-line home theater system, while he is not interested in replacing his two-decade-old shabby car. On the contrary, an automobile enthusiast wouldn't mind spending forty thousand dollars to buy a new Jaguar convertible, yet cares little about his junky component system. It is product involvement that helps us explain such differences among individuals in the purchase style. Product involvement refers to the extent to which a product is perceived to be important to a consumer (Zaichkowsky, 2001). Product involvement is an important factor that strongly influences consumer's purchase decision-making process, and thus has been of prime interest to consumer behavior researchers. Furthermore, researchers found that involvement is closely related to perceived risk (Dholakia, 2001). While abundant research exists addressing how product involvement relates to overall perceived risk, little attention has been paid to the relationship between involvement and different types of perceived risk in an electronic commerce setting. Given that perceived risk can be a substantial barrier to the online purchase (Jarvenpaa, 2000), research addressing such an issue will offer useful implications on what specific types of perceived risk an online firm should focus on mitigating if it is to increase sales to a fullest potential. Meanwhile, past research has focused on such consumer responses as information search and dissemination as a consequence of involvement, neglecting other behavioral responses like online merchant selection. For one example, will a consumer seriously considering the purchase of a pricey Guzzi bag perceive a great degree of risk associated with online buying and therefore choose to buy it from a digital storefront rather than from an online marketplace to mitigate risk? Will a consumer require greater trust on the part of the online merchant when the perceived risk of online buying is rather high? We intend to find answers to these research questions through an empirical study. This paper explores the impact of enduring product involvement and perceived risks on required trust level, and further on online merchant choice. For the purpose of the research, five types or components of perceived risk are taken into consideration, including financial, performance, delivery, psychological, and social risks. A research model has been built around the constructs under consideration, and 12 hypotheses have been developed based on the research model to examine the relationships between enduring involvement and five components of perceived risk, between five components of perceived risk and required trust level, between enduring involvement and required trust level, and finally between required trust level and preference toward an e-tailer. To attain our research objectives, we conducted an empirical analysis consisting of two phases of data collection: a pilot test and main survey. The pilot test was conducted using 25 college students to ensure that the questionnaire items are clear and straightforward. Then the main survey was conducted using 295 college students at a major university for nine days between December 13, 2010 and December 21, 2010. The measures employed to test the model included eight constructs: (1) enduring involvement, (2) financial risk, (3) performance risk, (4) delivery risk, (5) psychological risk, (6) social risk, (7) required trust level, (8) preference toward an e-tailer. The statistical package, SPSS 17.0, was used to test the internal consistency among the items within the individual measures. Based on the Cronbach's ${\alpha}$ coefficients of the individual measure, the reliability of all the variables is supported. Meanwhile, the Amos 18.0 package was employed to perform a confirmatory factor analysis designed to assess the unidimensionality of the measures. The goodness of fit for the measurement model was satisfied. Unidimensionality was tested using convergent, discriminant, and nomological validity. The statistical evidences proved that the three types of validity were all satisfied. Now the structured equation modeling technique was used to analyze the individual paths along the relationships among the research constructs. The results indicated that enduring involvement has significant positive relationships with all the five components of perceived risk, while only performance risk is significantly related to trust level required by consumers for purchase. It can be inferred from the findings that product performance problems are mostly likely to occur when a merchant behaves in an opportunistic manner. Positive relationships were also found between involvement and required trust level and between required trust level and online merchant choice. Enduring involvement is concerned with the pleasure a consumer derives from a product class and/or with the desire for knowledge for the product class, and thus is likely to motivate the consumer to look for ways of mitigating perceived risk by requiring a higher level of trust on the part of the online merchant. Likewise, a consumer requiring a high level of trust on the merchant will choose a digital storefront rather than an e-marketplace, since a digital storefront is believed to be trustworthier than an e-marketplace, as it fulfills orders by itself rather than acting as an intermediary. The findings of the present research provide both academic and practical implications. The first academic implication is that enduring product involvement is a strong motivator of consumer responses, especially the selection of a merchant, in the context of electronic shopping. Secondly, academicians are advised to pay attention to the finding that an individual component or type of perceived risk can be used as an important research construct, since it would allow one to pinpoint the specific types of risk that are influenced by antecedents or that influence consequents. Meanwhile, our research provides implications useful for online merchants (both online storefronts and e-marketplaces). Merchants may develop strategies to attract consumers by managing perceived performance risk involved in purchase decisions, since it was found to have significant positive relationship with the level of trust required by a consumer on the part of the merchant. One way to manage performance risk would be to thoroughly examine the product before shipping to ensure that it has no deficiencies or flaws. Secondly, digital storefronts are advised to focus on symbolic goods (e.g., cars, cell phones, fashion outfits, and handbags) in which consumers are relatively more involved than others, whereas e- marketplaces should put their emphasis on non-symbolic goods (e.g., drinks, books, MP3 players, and bike accessories).

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.27-57
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• 2008

Many consumers enjoy the challenge of purchasing a brand that matches well with their own values and personalities (for example, Ko et al., 2008; Ko et al., 2006). Therefore, the personalities of consumers can impact on the final selection of a brand and its brand personality in two ways: first, the consumers may incline to purchase a brand or a product that reflects their own personalities; second, consumers tend to choose a company that has similar brand personalities to those brands that are being promoted. Therefore, the objectives of this study are following: 1. Is there any empirical relationship between a consumer's personality and the personality of a brand that he or she chooses? 2. Can a corporate brand be differentiated by the brand personality? In short, consumers are more likely to hold favorable attitudes towards those brands that match their own personality and will most probably purchase those brands matching well with their personality. For example, Matzler et al. (2006) found that extraversion and openness were positively related to hedonic product value; and that the personality traits directly (openness) and indirectly (extraversion, via hedonic value) influenced brand effects, which in turn droved attitudinal and purchase loyalty. Based on the above discussion, the following hypotheses are proposed: Hypothesis 1: the personality of a consumer is related to the brand personality of a product/corporate that he/she purchases. Kuksov (2007) and Wernerfelt (1990) argued that brands as a symbolic language allowed consumers to communicate their types to each other and postulated that consumers had a certain value of communicating their types to each other. Therefore, how brand meanings are established, and how a firm communicate with consumers about the meanings of the brand are interesting topics for research (for example, Escalas and Bettman, 2005; McCracken, 1989; Moon, 2007). Hence, the following hypothesis is proposed: Hypothesis 2: A corporate brand identity is differentiated by the brand personality. And there are significant differences among companies. A questionnaire was developed for collecting empirical measures of the Big-Five personality traits and brand personality variables. A survey was conducted to the online access panel members through the Internet during December 2007 in Korea. In total, 500 respondents completed the questionnaire, and considered as useable. Personality constructs were measured using the Five-factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) scale and a total of 30 items were actually utilized. Brand personality was measured using the five-dimension scale developed by Aaker (1997). A total of 17 items were actually utilized. The seven-point Likert-type scale was the format of responses, for example, from 1 indicating strongly disagreed to 7 for strongly agreed. The Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS) was used for an empirical testing of the model, and the Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) was applied to estimate numerical values for the components in the model. To diagnose the presence of distribution problems in the data and to gauge their effects on the parameter estimates, bootstapping method was used. The results of the hypothesis-1 test empirically show that there exit certain causality relationship between a consumer's personality and the brand personality of the consumer's choice. Thus, the consumer's personality has an impact on consumer's final selection of a brand that has a brand personality matches well with their own personalities. In other words, the consumers are inclined to purchase a brand that reflects their own personalities and tend to choose a company that has similar brand personalities to those of the brand being promoted. The results of this study further suggest that certain dimensions of the brand personality cause consumers to have preference to certain (corporate) brands. For example, the conscientiousness, neuroticism, and extraversion of the consumer personality have positively related to a selection of "ruggedness" characteristics of the brand personality. Consumers who possess that personality dimension seek for matching with certain brand personality dimensions. Results of the hypothesis-2 test show that the average "ruggedness" attributes of the brand personality differ significantly among Korean automobile manufacturers. However, the result of ANOVA also indicates that there are no significant differences in the mean values among manufacturers for the "sophistication," "excitement," "competence" and "sincerity" attributes of the corporate brand personality. The tight link between what a firm is and its corporate brand means that there is far less room for marketing communications than there is with products and brands. Consequently, successful corporate brand strategies must position the organization within the boundaries of what is acceptable, while at the same time differentiating the organization from its competitors.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.1-20
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• 2008

Under the rubric of the new economy, a wide variety of economic and social phenomena have been identified and discussed since the 1990's. Most of the observations in the literature on the new economy are fragmented, casual, and anecdotal, not compiling to a whole picture of what the new economy is really about. Therefore, this study attempts to provide e-commerce companies with a better, more systematic understanding of the new economy and new economy phenomena as well as the implications of them in order to help them develop more effective business strategies. To provide a better understanding of the new economy phenomena, this article adopts system perspective as an overarching frame of reference for analysis. The systemic characteristics and behavior of the new economy is sought in five generic aspects of a system; 1) what are the entities that comprise the system, and how are they related to one another?; 2) how does the system function?; 3) what are the goods and services (output) that are generated and flow in the system?; 4) what is the value of those goods and services?; and 5) what are the collective, systemic quality and attributes of the system? Based upon the review and categorization, some essential characterizations are made for the five system aspects of the new economy. Such characterizations are interpreted as collectively enunciating the systemic characteristics and behavior of the new economy. The implications of the systemic under-standing of the new economy for business and firm strategy are discussed and some future research is suggested.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.59-89
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• 2010

One of the key words that represent the culture and social phenomena in this 21st century is 'Digital Convergence'. Presently our society is going through the second evolving phase of the convergence, integration between industries. Integration between industries refers to the phenomenon of integrating various industrial areas such as broadcasting, communication, finance, automobile, and medical treatment as the range of IT utilization becomes extended. The telecommunication-broadcasting bundling is a typical example of integration between industries. This study analyzed the effect of the service features of the bundling on the customer's acceptance intention by applying the innovative technology product acceptance model, TAM, in the process of accepting the telecommunication-broadcasting bundling. This study suggests three independent variables, the 'low cost(discount)', 'service integrity', and 'selectability', which affect perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and perceived risk, and figures out the actual influence as follows. In conclusion, these results suggest that in order to accept and spread the telecommunication-broadcasting bundling, it is necessary to establish (1) the cost discounting strategy realize (price strategy), (2) the fee noticing system, payment system, call-service system, and systemic integration including installation and A/S system integration, and develop (service strategy), (3) the bundling or related options that can provide users with selectability (product strategy).

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.41-47
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• 2017

This study is an empirical analysis of the welfare of small and medium venture company trade. In the past, although the study analyzes the trade welfare for representative firm, this research is focusing on the distribution of an entire industry of companies analyzed. In this study, medium-to venture enterprise-scale for logarithmic normal distribution and Pareto distribution is estimated, and this study investigates the trading welfare changes. Results of the analysis can be summarized as follows. First of all, greater trade benefits enterprise-scale heterogeneity appeared to be significant. The result of this finding appeared to be the same to large firms as well as small and medium ventures. Trading welfare, assuming the distribution of Pareto rather than logarithmic normal distribution it's supposed to be overwhelmingly large. Secondly, the case of large corporations shows the more trade welfare than that of small and medium venture companies. Third, assuming homogeneous distribution of enterprise-scale trade welfare differences did not exist. Finally, from the point of view of increasing the welfare of trade, the diversity aiming of venture business is a very important role in the long term, because of the small and medium-sized ventures trade role.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.91-114
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• 2011

The market size of e-Commerce in Japan was 15 trillion Yen in 2006, and B2C Internet shopping sales were over 6.57 trillion in 2009. Lakuten is a representative Internet shopping company whose market share is 45%. Lakuten has over 70,000 online stores and Japanese shoppers trust them based on the fair competition rule and pre-control system on e-commerce. Japanese consumers accept new technology rapidly and highly use Internet and mobile channel. This research analyse online shopping behaviors of Japan, a big e-commerce market. Internet shopping intention, satisfaction, and recommendation by Internet shopping motivations, perceived risks, shopping innovativeness were analyzed. A questionnaire survey of 464 Japanese consumer was performed and ANOVA, factor analysis, reliability test have done by SPSS 12.0. As the results, Internet shopping intentions were higher in groups of olders, higher innovativeness. House wives' satisfaction of Internet shopping is highest. High innovativeness group showed higher internet shopping motivation of economics, connivence, hedonic, and social. Student, women, and low income group perceives high risks to Internet shopping. Implications and further researches were suggested based on the results.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.47-73
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• 2012

SNS allowed users to serve not only as the content and message producer but as the consumer, with development into various types of SNS platforms. Instead of a traditional media structure of media-to-many and unspecified users, it also made it possible to achieve one-to-one or one-to-many interactions, regardless of time and space, through SNS platforms. Moreover, according to development of digital communication technology, IT, media contents and communication network have been mutually connected, though they were once separate. The changes in communication environments have caused rapid disorganization and reorganization in popular culture led by specific expert groups. Such trend has a greater influence on marketing strategies of enterprises. In other words, it will lead them to mostly introduce new information technologies, based on consumer market, and to strategically participate in SNS for promotion and marketing for their products and brands. Likewise, SNS has currently appeared as the main media affecting consumers' behaviors. In consideration of the importance of SNS features, which can stimulate responses of other users, analysis of main features affecting SNS user acceptance decision is required, as well as its utilization strategies. Accordingly, this study conducted division of SNS features into openness, quickness, interactiveness and economical efficiency to derive strategies for increasing the usage frequency of SNS and ultimately maximizing the expectation effect, in addition to an empirical analysis of effects of SNS features on usefulness, easiness and pleasure perceived in SNS, and SNS user intention.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.702-717
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• 2009

This study estimates the willingness-to-pay(WTP) for conserving Sindu coastal sand dune and asset value of Sindu coastal sand dune by means of contingent valuation method. CV market scenario is designed to elicitate his/her WTP considering use value and nonuse value of Sindu coastal sand dune. The yearly WTP for Sindu coastal sand dune is 3,059 won(95% C.I. 2,591~3,612 won) in the case of a househodl, therefore amounts to 44 billion won(95% C.I. 37~52 billion won) for the whole nation. We estimate the asset value of Sindu coastal sand dune by 7.5% discount rate to be 587 billion won with 95% confidence interval of 497 to 693 billion won. The direct use value which has accounted for 13.4% is 79 billion won(95% C.I. 67~93 billion won), and the indirect use value which has accounted for 30.2% amounts to 177 billion won(95% C.I. 150~209 billion won), and the option value which has accounted for 19.4% is 114 billion won(95% C.I. 97~135 billion won), and the conservation value which has accounted for 37.0% amounts to 217 billion won(95% C.I. 184~256 billion won).