• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.1-23
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• 2016

Purpose Self-congruity deals with the effect of symbolic value-expressive attributes on consumer decision and behavior, which is the theoretical foundation of the "non-utilitarian destination positioning". Functional congruity refers to utilitarian evaluation of a product or service by consumers. In addition, recent years, social network services, especially mobile social network services have created many opportunities for e-WOM communication that enables consumers to share personal consumption related information anywhere at any time. Moreover, self-construal is a hot and popular topic that has been discussed in the field of modem psychology as well as in marketing area. This study aims to examine the moderating effect of self-construal on the relationship between self-congruity, functional congruity and tourists' positive electronic word of mouth (e-WOM). Design/methodology/approach In order to verify the hypotheses, we developed a questionnaire with 32 survey items. We measured all the items on a five-point Likert-type scale. We used Sojump.com to collect questionnaire and gathered 218 responses from whom have visited Korea before. After a pilot test, we analyzed the main survey data by using SPSS 20.0 and AMOS 18.0, and employed structural equation modeling to test the hypotheses. We first estimated the measurement model for its overall fit, reliability and validity through a confirmatory factor analysis and used common method bias test to make sure that whether measures are affected by common-method variance. Then we tested the hypotheses through the structural model and used regression analysis to measure moderating effect of self-construal. Findings The results reveal that the effect of self-congruity on tourists' positive e-WOM is stronger for tourists with an independent self-construal compared with those with interdependent self-construal. Moreover, it shows that the effect of functional congruity on tourists' positive e-WOM becomes salient when tourists' self-construal is primed to be interdependent rather than independent. We expect that the results of this study can provide important implications for academic and practical perspective.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.273-293
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• 2021

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the size of the e-commerce has been increased rapidly. This pandemic, which made contact-less communication culture in everyday life made the e-commerce market to be opened even to the consumers who would hesitate to purchase and pay by electronic device without any personal contacts and seeing or touching the real products. Consumers who have experienced the easy access and convenience of the online purchase would continue to take those advantages even after the pandemic. During this time of transformation, however, the size of information source for the consumers has become even shrunk into a flat screen and limited to visual only. To provide differentiated and competitive information on products, companies are adopting AR/VR and steaming technologies but the reviews from the honest users need to be recognized as important in that it is regarded as strong as the well refined product information provided by marketing professionals of the company and companies may obtain useful insight for product development, marketing and sales strategies. Then from the consumer's point of view, if the ratings of reviews are widely diverged how consumers would process the review information before purchase? Are non-converged ratings always unreliable and worthless? In this study, we analyzed how consumer's regulatory focus moderate the attitude to process the diverged information. This experiment was designed as a 2x2 factorial study to see how the variance of product review ratings (high vs. low) for cosmetics affects product attitudes by the consumers' regulatory focus (prevention focus vs. improvement focus). As a result of the study, it was found that prevention-focused consumers showed high product attitude when the review variance was low, whereas promotion-focused consumers showed high product attitude when the review variance was high. With such a study, this thesis can explain that even if a product with exactly the same average rating, the converged or diverged review can be interpreted differently by customer's regulatory focus. This paper has a theoretical contribution to elucidate the mechanism of consumer's information process when the information is not converged. In practice, as reviews and sales records of each product are accumulated, as an one of applied knowledge management types with big data, companies may develop and provide even reinforced customer experience by providing personalized and optimized products and review information.

• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.75-103
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• 2020

There is a growing voice that medical information should be shared because it can prepare for genetic diseases or cancer by analyzing and utilizing medical information in big data or artificial intelligence to develop medical technology and improve patient care. The utilization and protection of patients' personal information are the same as two sides of the same coin. Medical institutions or medical personnel should take extra caution in handling personal information with high environmental distinct characteristics and sensitivity, which is different from general information processors. In general, the patient's personal information is processed by medical personnel or medical institutions through the processes of collection, creation, and destruction. Still, the use of terms related to personal information in the Medical Service Act is jumbled, or the scope of application is unclear, so it relies on the interpretation of precedents. For the medical personnel or the founder of the medical institution, in the case of infringement of Article 24(4), it cannot be regarded that it means only medical treatment information among personal information, whether or not it should be treated the same as the personal information under Article 23, because the sensitive information of patients is recorded, saved, and stored in electronic medical records. Although the prohibition of information leakage under Article 19 of the Medical Service Act has a revision; 'secret' that was learned in business was revised to 'information', but only the name was changed, and the benefit and protection of the law is the same as the 'secret' of the criminal law, such that the patient's right to self-determination of personal information is not protected. The Privacy Law and the Local Health Act consider the benefit and protection of the law in 'information learned in business' as the right to self-determination of personal information and stipulate the same penalties for personal information infringement such as leakage, forgery, alteration, and damage. The privacy regulations of the Medical Service Act require that the terms be adjusted uniformly because the jumbled use of terms can confuse information subjects, information processors, and shows certain limitations on the protection of personal information because the contents or scope of the regulations of the Medical Service Law for special corporations and the Privacy Law may cause confusion in interpretation. The patient's personal information is sensitive and must be safely protected in its use and processing. Personal information must be processed in accordance with the protection principle of Privacy Law, and the rights such as privacy, freedom, personal rights, and the right to self-determination of personal information of patients or guardians, the information subject, must be guaranteed.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.1-25
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• 2010

Motion pictures are so typical experience goods that consumers tend to look for more credible information. Hence, movie audiences consider movie viewers' reviews more important than the information provided by the film distributor. Recently many portal sites allow consumers to post their reviews and opinions so that other people check the number of consumer reviews and scores before going to the theater. There are a few previous researches studying the electronic word of mouth(eWOM) effect in the movie industry. They found that the volume of eWOM influenced the revenue of the movie significantly but the valence of eWOM did not affect it much (Liu 2006). The goal of our research is also to investigate the eWOM effects in general. But our research is different from the previous studies in several aspects. First, we study the eWOM effect in Korean movie industry. In other words, we would like to check whether we can generalize the results of the previous research across countries. The similar econometric models are applied to Korean movie data that include 746,282 consumer reviews on 439 movies. Our results show that both the valence(RATING) and the volume(LNMSG) of the eWOM influence weekly movie revenues. This result is different from the previous research findings that the volume only influences the revenue. We conjectured that the difference of self construal between Asian and American culture may explain this difference (Kitayama 1991). Asians including Koreans have more interdependent self construal than American, so that they are easily affected by other people's thought and suggestion. Hence, the valence of the eWOM affects Koreans' choice of the movie. Second, we find the critical defect of the previous eWOM models and, hence, attempt to correct it. The previous eWOM model assumes that the volume of eWOM (LNMSG) is an independent variable affecting the movie revenue (LNREV). However, the revenue can influence the volume of the eWOM. We think that treating the volume of eWOM as an independent variable a priori is too restrictive. In order to remedy this problem, we employed a simultaneous equation in which the movie revenue and the volume of the eWOM can affect each other. That is, our eWOM model assumes that the revenue (LNREV) and the volume of eWOM (LNMSG) have endogenous relationship where they influence each other. The results from this simultaneous equation model showed that the movie revenue and the eWOM volume interact each other. The movie revenue influences the eWOM volume for the entire 8 weeks. The reverse effect is more complex. Both the volume and the valence of eWOM affect the revenue in the first week, but only the volume affect the revenue for the rest of the weeks. In the first week, consumers may be curious about the movie and look for various kinds of information they can trust, so that they use the both the quantity and quality of consumer reviews. But from the second week, the quality of the eWOM only affects the movie revenue, implying that the review ratings are more important than the number of reviews. Third, our results show that the ratings by professional critics (CRATING) had negative effect to the weekly movie revenue (LNREV). Professional critics often give low ratings to the blockbuster movies that do not have much cinematic quality. Experienced audiences who watch the movie for fun do not trust the professionals' ratings and, hence, tend to go for the low-rated movies by them. In summary, applied to the Korean movie ratings data and employing a simultaneous model, our results are different from the previous eWOM studies: 1) Koreans (or Asians) care about the others' evaluation quality more than quantity, 2) The volume of eWOM is not the cause but the result of the revenue, 3) Professional reviews can give the negative effect to the movie revenue.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.61-101
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• 2014

This study investigates when and how disagreements in online customer ratings prompt more favorable product evaluations. Among the three metrics of volume, valence, and variance that feature in the research on online customer ratings, volume and valence have exhibited consistently positive patterns in their effects on product sales or evaluations (e.g., Dellarocas, Zhang, and Awad 2007; Liu 2006). Ratings variance, or the degree of disagreement among reviewers, however, has shown rather mixed results, with some studies reporting positive effects on product sales (e.g., Clement, Proppe, and Rott 2007) while others finding negative effects on product evaluations (e.g., Zhu and Zhang 2010). This study aims to resolve these contradictory findings by introducing preference heterogeneity as a possible moderator and causal attribution as a mediator to account for the moderating effect. The main proposition of this study is that when preference heterogeneity is perceived as high, a disagreement in ratings is attributed more to reviewers' different preferences than to unreliable product quality, which in turn prompts better quality evaluations of a product. Because disagreements mostly result from differences in reviewers' tastes or the low reliability of a product's quality (Mizerski 1982; Sen and Lerman 2007), a greater level of attribution to reviewer tastes can mitigate the negative effect of disagreement on product evaluations. Specifically, if consumers infer that reviewers' heterogeneous preferences result in subjectively different experiences and thereby highly diverse ratings, they would not disregard the overall quality of a product. However, if consumers infer that reviewers' preferences are quite homogeneous and thus the low reliability of the product quality contributes to such disagreements, they would discount the overall product quality. Therefore, consumers would respond more favorably to disagreements in ratings when preference heterogeneity is perceived as high rather than low. This study furthermore extends this prediction to the various levels of average ratings. The heuristicsystematic processing model so far indicates that the engagement in effortful systematic processing occurs only when sufficient motivation is present (Hann et al. 2007; Maheswaran and Chaiken 1991; Martin and Davies 1998). One of the key factors affecting this motivation is the aspiration level of the decision maker. Only under conditions that meet or exceed his aspiration level does he tend to engage in systematic processing (Patzelt and Shepherd 2008; Stephanous and Sage 1987). Therefore, systematic causal attribution processing regarding ratings variance is likely more activated when the average rating is high enough to meet the aspiration level than when it is too low to meet it. Considering that the interaction between ratings variance and preference heterogeneity occurs through the mediation of causal attribution, this greater activation of causal attribution in high versus low average ratings would lead to more pronounced interaction between ratings variance and preference heterogeneity in high versus low average ratings. Overall, this study proposes that the interaction between ratings variance and preference heterogeneity is more pronounced when the average rating is high as compared to when it is low. Two laboratory studies lend support to these predictions. Study 1 reveals that participants exposed to a high-preference heterogeneity book title (i.e., a novel) attributed disagreement in ratings more to reviewers' tastes, and thereby more favorably evaluated books with such ratings, compared to those exposed to a low-preference heterogeneity title (i.e., an English listening practice book). Study 2 then extended these findings to the various levels of average ratings and found that this greater preference for disagreement options under high preference heterogeneity is more pronounced when the average rating is high compared to when it is low. This study makes an important theoretical contribution to the online customer ratings literature by showing that preference heterogeneity serves as a key moderator of the effect of ratings variance on product evaluations and that causal attribution acts as a mediator of this moderation effect. A more comprehensive picture of the interplay among ratings variance, preference heterogeneity, and average ratings is also provided by revealing that the interaction between ratings variance and preference heterogeneity varies as a function of the average rating. In addition, this work provides some significant managerial implications for marketers in terms of how they manage word of mouth. Because a lack of consensus creates some uncertainty and anxiety over the given information, consumers experience a psychological burden regarding their choice of a product when ratings show disagreement. The results of this study offer a way to address this problem. By explicitly clarifying that there are many more differences in tastes among reviewers than expected, marketers can allow consumers to speculate that differing tastes of reviewers rather than an uncertain or poor product quality contribute to such conflicts in ratings. Thus, when fierce disagreements are observed in the WOM arena, marketers are advised to communicate to consumers that diverse, rather than uniform, tastes govern reviews and evaluations of products.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.301-312
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• 2008

Satisfaction of consumer preferences is a key factor for the success of the products. Therefore, design mangers try to develop the profitable products through the intensive survey on the consumer preferences. Although the studies on the preferable product design and the design factors have long been carried out, most of these studies dealt only with the design factors preferable for individual product category ignoring the relationship of the product categories which are related to each other. For designers and design managers, in this study, we propose the guidelines of successful product development by finding preferred common and distinct design factors through analysis of the relations between the consumer preferences and design factors in various portable electric devices. To this end, we analyzed the preferred common and distinct design factors from portable electric devices including the electronic dictionaries, notebook computers, cellular phones, and MP3 players. We used hierarchical regression analysis for the effects of the design factors on the preferences among the product categories and regression analysis for the effects among each product category. The analysis on the preferred common design factors among the four product categories revealed that consumers did not care about the whole body type but preferred white color, metallic and glassy texture in the body. Also, the preferred design factors in the each product category are as follows; oval body shape and black color in electronic dictionaries, white color, metallic and glassy texture in notebook computers, plastic texture in cellular phones, rectangular body shape and plastic texture in MP3 players. In the case of notebook computers, the preferred common and distinct design factors were the same. We expect these results will be helpful for designers and design managers to identify the preferred design factors to consider when developing the various portable electric devices.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.253-277
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• 2002

Nowaday, the advanced technology in information and communication has been leading the dramatic change of transaction paradigm expansion from physical basis to electronic one. As we know, financial services support most of financial exchange between two business parties. So the expansion of electronic transaction paradigm affects to every financial institutions which provide financial services. Thus, financial institutions have accepted e-Finance systems and providing internet financial services to live in the competition. The purpose of this study is to contribute the qualitative enhancement of its customer service, rapid diffusion and accurate strategy establishment for e-Finance industry in the user side. Through the literature review and factor and reliability analysis, this study selects six diffusion factors such as efficiency of perceived e-Finance, reliability and safety of e-Finance in perceived e-Finance itself's characteristic; confidence, technical factors and the customer service quality of e-Finance system in perception on e-Finance System; inclination to innovation in the personal characteristic. According to result of hypothesis verification by using logistics regression analysis, technical factors and the customer service quality of e-Finance system in perception on e-Finance System and inclination to innovation in the personal characteristic gave statistically positive effect to the diffusion decision at the significant level 0.05 and 0.01. However efficiency of perceived e-Finance, reliability and safety of e-Finance in perceived e-Finance itself's characteristic didn't affect to diffusion decision and confidence of e-Finance system in perception on e-Finance System didn't have any statistical significancy. This study can be used as a basic material for the forward empirical study of diffusion factors in the user side and be able to apply to company and government policy making or embodiment, determination for customer service quality degree of financial institutions. But this study has some limitations like didn't touch satisfaction factors and its effect, only deal domestic customers and didn't use multi-regression analysis.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea CI
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• v.47 no.5
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• pp.50-60
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• 2010

For the last half a century, the personal computer and software industries have been prosperous due to the incessant evolution of computer systems. In the 21st century, the embedded system market has greatly increased as the market shifted to the mobile gadget field. While a lot of multimedia gadgets such as mobile phone, navigation system, PMP, etc. are pouring into the market, most industrial control systems still rely on 8-bit micro-controllers and simple application software techniques. Unfortunately, the technological barrier which requires additional investment and higher quality manpower to overcome, and the business risks which come from the uncertainty of the market growth and the competitiveness of the resulting products have prevented the companies in the industry from taking advantage of such fancy technologies. However, high performance, low-power and low-cost hardware and software platforms will enable their high-technology products to be developed and recognized by potential clients in the future. This paper presents such a platform for industrial embedded systems. The platform was designed based on Telechips TCC8300 multimedia processor which embedded a variety of parallel hardware for the implementation of multimedia functions. And open-source Embedded Linux, TinyX and GTK+ are used for implementation of GUI to minimize technology costs. In order to estimate the expected performance and power consumption, the performance improvement and the power consumption due to each of enabled hardware sub-systems including YUV2RGB frame converter are measured. An analytic model was devised to check the feasibility of a new application and trade off its performance and power consumption. The validity of the model has been confirmed by implementing a real target system. The cost can be further mitigated by using the hardware parts which are being used for mass production products mostly in the cell-phone market.

• The Korean Journal of Archival Studies
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• no.28
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• pp.35-81
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• 2011

Manhwa is a mass media (to expose all faces of an era such as politics, society, cultures, etc with the methodology of irony, parody, etc). Since the Manhwa records is primary culture infrastructure, it can create the high value-added industry by connecting with fancy, character, game, movie, drama, theme park, advertising business. However, due to lack of active and systematic aquisition system, as precious Manhwa manuscript is being lost every year and the contents hard to preserve such as Manhwa content in the form of electronic records are increasing, the countermeasure of Manhwa contents management is needed desperately. In this study, based on these perceptions, the need of Manhwa records management is examined, and the characteristics and the components of Manhwa records were analyzed. And at the same time, the functions of record management process reflecting the characteristics of Manhwa records were extracted by analyzing various cases of overseas Cartoon Archives. And then, the framework of record-keeping regime was segmented into each of acquisition management service areas and the general Manhwa records archiving strategy, which manages the Manhwa contents records, was established and suggested. The acquired Manhwa content records will secure the context among records and warrant the preservation of records and provide diverse access points by reflecting multi classification and multi-level descriptive element. The Manhwa records completed the intellectual arrangement will be preserved after the conservation in an environment equipped with preservation facilities or preserved using digital format in case of electronic records or when there is potential risk of damaging the records. Since the purpose of the Manhwa records is to use them, the information may be provided to diverse classes of users through the exhibition, the distribution, and the development of archival information content. Since the term of "Manhwa records" is unfamiliar yet and almost no study has been conducted in the perspective of records management, it will be the limit of this study only presenting acquisition strategy, management and service strategy of Manhwa contents and suggesting simple examples. However, if Manhwa records management strategy are possibly introduced practically to Manhwa manuscript repositories through archival approach, it will allow systematic acquisition, preservation, arrangement of Manhwa records and will contribute greatly to form a foundation for future Korean culture contents management.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.679-687
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• 2021

The purpose of the present study was to document the standardization and management process of interface terminology regarding the chief complaints, diagnoses, and procedures, including surgery in a four-hospital consortium. The process was proposed, discussed, modified, and finalized in 2016 by the Terminology Standardization Committee (TSC), consisting of personnel from four hospitals. A request regarding interface terminology was classified into one of four categories: 1) registration of a new term, 2) revision, 3) deleting an old term and registering a new term, and 4) deletion. A request was processed in the following order: 1) collecting testimonies from related departments and 2) voting by the TSC. At least five out of the seven possible members of the voting pool need to approve of it. Mapping to the reference terminology was performed by three independent medical information managers. All processes were performed online, and the voting and mapping results were collected automatically. This process made the decision-making process clear and fast. In addition, this made users receptive to the decision of the TSC. In the 16 months after the process was adopted, there were 126 new terms registered, 131 revisions, 40 deletions of an old term and the registration of a new term, and 1235 deletions.