• Korea Trade Review
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.219-243
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• 2018

This study focused on the rapidly growing Chinese market by developing an evaluation model for overseas direct sales websites for Chinese consumers. In addition, we developed specific strategic alternatives for each sub-market by conducting multi-group analysis for each consumer's characteristics. Results showed that the level of concern about site use had a stronger impact on persistent use behavior. In addition, among antecedents that affect the level of assurance and concern, we found that these includes not only the perceived benefits and perceived risk factors identified in previous studies but also social-cultural factors. In addition, this study compares the evaluation of overseas direct sales website according to the level of involvement of users. This study analyzes the differences in coefficients among the paths and suggest practical implications for each group.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.1832-1843
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• 2015

Recently, since the "Capital Market Consolidation Act" has been effective in 2009, the competition among the securities companies in Korean security market has been fierce. Thus, securities business lately are needed by the market environmental requirements rapidly changed for various strategies. The purpose of this study was to identify the effect of corporate attribute, employee attribute, financial product attribute securities on customer satisfaction, trust with the firm, and usage intention. As the subjects I selected the customer of securities in Seoul in 2014 and conducted survey with questionnaires. Among total 400, I chose 378 as the valid sample by convenience sampling. For the data process, I used SPSS 20.0 I verified the perspective hypotheses after testing reliability and validity of fit by the data process. The results are as following. First, it was shown that the sub-factors of corporate attribute, employee attribute, financial product attribute in securities as ethics, innovation, size, kind, professionalism, ethics, profitability and diversity had significant effect on usage intention. Second, the study confirms that reliability and satisfaction influences customer loyalty as moderate variable. The industrial and academic significance of this study is that it may serve as a useful base date to understand customer behavior and draw new strategies in a financial management environment.

• Culinary science and hospitality research
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.93-107
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• 2009

The aims of this study concerning tourists travelling in the island of Jeju include: to identify and assess the promotional efforts for traditional Jeju cuisine; and to identify the impacts of those efforts on customers and tourists. The analyses revealed that continuous promotion efforts, along with changes in the cooking methods and the development of new menus, are needed for the items of traditional Jeju cuisine that are relatively unknown to tourists and that fail to satisfy customers. Customers seeking Jeju food reported high satisfaction with such items as grilled meat and fish, steamed meat and fish, and raw fish(hoe), so those cooking methods must also be continually improved. Promotional efforts had impacts on the satisfaction and revisit rates of customers while the recognizability of foods offered had impacts on all areas, including the satisfaction and revisit rates of customers as well as word-of-mouth advertising among them. There needs to be an experience-oriented or educational program that introduces customers to traditional Jeju cuisine. Since customers and tourists gain information on traditional Jeju cuisine from the recommendations and word-of-mouth advertising from the locals they meet on the island, traditional Jeju cuisine should also be advertised to the local residents. The commercial merchandising of Jeju culinary culture and making festivals based on it must, therefore, be preceded by studies on how to increase the locals' awareness of local traditional cuisine.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.175-191
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• 2011

With the MICE(Meeting, Incentive travel, Convention, Exhibition) industry coming into the spotlight, there has been a growing interest in the domestic exhibition industry. Accordingly, in Korea, various studies of the industry are being conducted to enhance exhibition performance as in the United States or Europe. Some studies are focusing particularly on analyzing visiting patterns of exhibition visitors using intelligent information technology in consideration of the variations in effects of watching exhibitions according to the exhibitory environment or technique, thereby understanding visitors and, furthermore, drawing the correlations between exhibiting businesses and improving exhibition performance. However, previous studies related to booth recommendation systems only discussed the accuracy of recommendation in the aspect of a system rather than determining changes in visitors' behavior or perception by recommendation. A booth recommendation system enables visitors to visit unplanned exhibition booths by recommending visitors suitable ones based on information about visitors' visits. Meanwhile, some visitors may be satisfied with their unplanned visits, while others may consider the recommending process to be cumbersome or obstructive to their free observation. In the latter case, the exhibition is likely to produce worse results compared to when visitors are allowed to freely observe the exhibition. Thus, in order to apply a booth recommendation system to exhibition halls, the factors affecting the performance of the system should be generally examined, and the effects of the system on visitors' unplanned visiting behavior should be carefully studied. As such, this study aims to determine the factors that affect the performance of a booth recommendation system by reviewing theories and literature and to examine the effects of visitors' perceived performance of the system on their satisfaction of unplanned behavior and intention to reuse the system. Toward this end, the unplanned behavior theory was adopted as the theoretical framework. Unplanned behavior can be defined as "behavior that is done by consumers without any prearranged plan". Thus far, consumers' unplanned behavior has been studied in various fields. The field of marketing, in particular, has focused on unplanned purchasing among various types of unplanned behavior, which has been often confused with impulsive purchasing. Nevertheless, the two are different from each other; while impulsive purchasing means strong, continuous urges to purchase things, unplanned purchasing is behavior with purchasing decisions that are made inside a store, not before going into one. In other words, all impulsive purchases are unplanned, but not all unplanned purchases are impulsive. Then why do consumers engage in unplanned behavior? Regarding this question, many scholars have made many suggestions, but there has been a consensus that it is because consumers have enough flexibility to change their plans in the middle instead of developing plans thoroughly. In other words, if unplanned behavior costs much, it will be difficult for consumers to change their prearranged plans. In the case of the exhibition hall examined in this study, visitors learn the programs of the hall and plan which booth to visit in advance. This is because it is practically impossible for visitors to visit all of the various booths that an exhibition operates due to their limited time. Therefore, if the booth recommendation system proposed in this study recommends visitors booths that they may like, they can change their plans and visit the recommended booths. Such visiting behavior can be regarded similarly to consumers' visit to a store or tourists' unplanned behavior in a tourist spot and can be understand in the same context as the recent increase in tourism consumers' unplanned behavior influenced by information devices. Thus, the following research model was established. This research model uses visitors' perceived performance of a booth recommendation system as the parameter, and the factors affecting the performance include trust in the system, exhibition visitors' knowledge levels, expected personalization of the system, and the system's threat to freedom. In addition, the causal relation between visitors' satisfaction of their perceived performance of the system and unplanned behavior and their intention to reuse the system was determined. While doing so, trust in the booth recommendation system consisted of 2nd order factors such as competence, benevolence, and integrity, while the other factors consisted of 1st order factors. In order to verify this model, a booth recommendation system was developed to be tested in 2011 DMC Culture Open, and 101 visitors were empirically studied and analyzed. The results are as follows. First, visitors' trust was the most important factor in the booth recommendation system, and the visitors who used the system perceived its performance as a success based on their trust. Second, visitors' knowledge levels also had significant effects on the performance of the system, which indicates that the performance of a recommendation system requires an advance understanding. In other words, visitors with higher levels of understanding of the exhibition hall learned better the usefulness of the booth recommendation system. Third, expected personalization did not have significant effects, which is a different result from previous studies' results. This is presumably because the booth recommendation system used in this study did not provide enough personalized services. Fourth, the recommendation information provided by the booth recommendation system was not considered to threaten or restrict one's freedom, which means it is valuable in terms of usefulness. Lastly, high performance of the booth recommendation system led to visitors' high satisfaction levels of unplanned behavior and intention to reuse the system. To sum up, in order to analyze the effects of a booth recommendation system on visitors' unplanned visits to a booth, empirical data were examined based on the unplanned behavior theory and, accordingly, useful suggestions for the establishment and design of future booth recommendation systems were made. In the future, further examination should be conducted through elaborate survey questions and survey objects.

• Journal of Family Resource Management and Policy Review
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.239-262
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• 2010

This study looks at the patterns of married women's lifestyles and verifies whether there are differences in their preferences, the will to continue shopping, and the importance of healthy foods. The paper analyzes the relative influence of each lifestyle pattern on the level of satisfaction with healthy foods. The results of the analysis of this study are as follows. To find patterns in the lifestyles of married women ages 20s to 50s, the factors were analyzed and five lifestyle patterns were extracted: health managing type, fashion pursuing type, self-expressing type, family-oriented type, and eco-friendly type. If we examine the purchasing of healthy foods for each lifestyle, women with a self-expressing lifestyle gain more information from news articles, books, and salespeople than from other information sources. Women of the health managing, family-oriented, and eco-friendly types had high purchasing frequencies and amounts. A cluster analysis was carried out to categorize the different groups being investigated into lifestyle types. They were categorized into the four clusters: active multiple-oriented type; fashion, self-expressing compromising type; passive well-being oriented type; and family and health managing type. It has been verified that there are differences among the clusters in terms of the level of importance of products, contributions to health, as well as distribution and management of healthy foods. To be more specific, the level of importance of the products as well as their distribution and management manifested as being higher among the active multiple-oriented type and the family-oriented and health managing types. The level of importance of contributions to health scored high among all groups, except the passive well-being oriented type. The active multiple-oriented type and the family-oriented and health managing types showed a high level of preference and will to continue purchasing healthy foods, while the fashion and self-expressing compromising types and passive well-being oriented type showed a low level of preference and will. In order to find patterns in the level of satisfaction with healthy foods, three factors were analyzed: credibility of labels, contributions to health, and satisfaction with the store. The factors that had the greatest influence on the total level of satisfaction was the credibility of labels for the family-oriented lifestyle; a product's contribution to health for the health managing lifestyle; and the store for the fashion pursuing lifestyle.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.147-165
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• 2008

IT education can be summarized as persuading the educatee to accept IT. The persuasion is made by delivering the messages for how-to-use and where-to-use to the educatee, which leads formulation of a belief structure for using IT. Therefore, message based persuasion theory, as well as IT acceptance theories such as technology acceptance model(TAM), would play a very important role for explaining IT education. According to elaboration likelihood model(ELM) that has been considered as one of the most influential persuasion theories, people change attitude or perception by two routes, central route and peripheral route. In central route, people would think critically about issue-related arguments in an informational message. In peripheral route, subjects rely on cues regarding the target behavior with less cognitive efforts. Moreover, such persuasion process is not a one-shot program but continuous repetition with feedbacks, which leads to changing a belief structure for using IT. An educatee would get more knowledge and experiences of using IT as following an education program, and be more dependent on a central route than a peripheral route. Such change would reformulate a belief structure which is different from the intial one. The objectives of this study are the following two: First, an identification of the relationship between ELM and belief structures for using IT. Especially, we analyze the effects of message interpretation through both of central and peripheral routes on perceived usefulness which is an important explaining variable in TAM and perceived use control which have perceived ease of use and perceived controllability as sub-dimensions. Second, a longitudinal analysis of the above effects. In other words, change of the relationship between interpretation of message delivered by IT education and beliefs of IT using is analyzed longitudinally. For achievement of our objectives, we suggest a research model, which is constructed as three-layered. While first layer has a dependent variable, use intention, second one has perceived usefulness and perceived use control that has two sub-concepts, perceived ease of use and perceived controllability. Finally, third one is related with two routes in ELM, source credibility and argument quality which are operationalization of peripheral route and central route respectively. By these variables, we suggest five hypotheses. In addition to relationship among variables, we suggest two additional hypotheses, moderation effects of time in the relationships between perceived usefulness and two routes. That is, source credibility's influence on perceived usefulness is decreased as time flows, and argument quality's influence is increased. For validation of it, our research model is tested empirically. With measurements which have been validated in the other studies, we survey students in an Excel class two times for longitudinal analysis. Data Analysis is done by partial least square(PLS), which is known as an appropriate approach for multi-group comparison analysis with a small sized sample as like this study. In result. all hypotheses are statistically supported. One of theoretical contributions in this study is an analysis of IT education based on ELM and TAM which are considered as important theories in psychology and IS theories respectively. A longitudinal analysis by comparison between two surveys based on PLS is also considered as a methodological contribution. In practice, finding the importance of peripheral route in early stage of IT education should be notable.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.209-227
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• 2010

One type of innovative multimedia platform environments is mobile data services (MDS), exemplified by Nate, Show, and OZ. In the context of MDS, enhancing user's continuance intention is a significant challenge to the continuing growth and long-term viability of MDS. Because the cost of using MDS is borne mainly by users, they are likely to evaluate it based on perceptions of what is received and what is given. This study identifies perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment as the 'get'components, and perceived fee and perceived anxiety as the 'give' components. To understand the role of get and give components in the MDS post-adoption environment, this study incorporates these components into expectation confirmation model. We collected data from 204 users who had direct experiences with MDS within recent 3 months. The data was analyzed by employing PLS (partial least squares). Theoretical and practical implications of our findings are discussed.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.141-173
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• 2007

The study examines how the environmental factors of store influence service brand personality and repurchase intention in the service environment. The service industry has been experiencing the intensified competition with the industry's continuous growth and the influence from rapid technological advancement. Under the circumstances, it has become ever more important for the brand competitiveness to be distinctively recognized against competition. A brand needs to be distinguished and differentiated from competing companies because they are all engaged in the similar environment of the service industry. The differentiation of brand achievement has become increasingly important to highlight certain brand functions to include emotional, self-expressive, and symbolic functions since the importance of such functions has been further emphasized in promoting consumption activities. That is the recent role of brand personality that has been emphasized in the service industry. In other words, customers now freely and actively express their personalities or egos in consumption activities, taking an important role in construction of a brand asset. Hence, the study suggests that it is necessary to disperse the recognition and acknowledgement that the maintenance of the existing customers contributes more to boost repurchase intention when it is compared to the efforts to create new customers, particularly in the service industry. Meanwhile, the store itself can offer a unique environment that may influence the consumer's purchase decision. Consumers interact with store environments in the process of,virtually, all household purchase they make (Sarel 1981). Thus, store environments may encourage customers to purchase. The roles that store environments play are to provide informational cues to customers about the store and goods and communicate messages to stimulate consumers' emotions. The store environments differentiate the store from competing stores and build a unique service brand personality. However, the existing studies related to brand in the service industry mostly concentrated on the relationship between the quality of service and customer satisfaction, and they are mostly generalized while the connective studies focused on brand personality. Such approaches show limitations and are insufficient to investigate on the relationship between store environment and brand personality in the service industry. Accordingly, the study intends to identify the level of contribution to the establishment of brand personality made by the store's physical environments that influence on the specific brand characteristics depending on the type of service. The study also intends to identify what kind of relationships with brand personality exists with brand personality while being influenced by store environments. In addition, the study intends to make meaningful suggestions to better direct marketing efforts by identifying whether a brand personality makes a positive influence to induce an intention for repurchase. For this study, the service industry is classified into four categories based on to the characteristics of service: experimental-emotional service, emotional -credible service, credible-functional service, and functional-experimental service. The type of business with the most frequent customer contact is determined for each service type and the enterprise with the highest brand value in each service sector based on the report made by the Korea Management Association. They are designated as the representative of each category. The selected representatives are a fast-food store (experimental-emotional service), a cinema house (emotional-credible service), a bank (credible-functional service), and discount store (functional-experimental service). The survey was conducted for the four selected brands to represent each service category among consumers who are experienced users of the designated stores in Seoul Metropolitan City and Gyeonggi province via written questionnaires in order to verify the suggested assumptions in the study. In particular, the survey adopted 15 scales, which represent each characteristic factor, among the 42 unique characteristics developed by Jennifer Aaker(1997) to assess the brand personality of each service brand. SPSS for Windows Release 12.0 and LISREL were used in the analysis of data verification. The methodology of the structural equation model was used for the study and the pivotal findings are as follows. 1) The environmental factors ware classified as design factors, ambient factors, and social factors. Therefore, the validity of measurement scale of Baker et al. (1994) was proved. 2) The service brand personalities were subdivided as sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and ruggedness, which makes the use of the brand personality scales by Jennifer Aaker(1997) appropriate in the service industry as well. 3) One-way ANOVA analysis on the scales of store environment and service brand personality showed that there exist statistically significant differences in each service category. For example, the social factors were highest in discount stores, while the ambient factors and design factors were highest in fast-food stores. The discount stores were highest in the sincerity and excitement, while the highest point for banks was in the competence and ruggedness, and the highest point for fast-food stores was in the sophistication, The consumers will make a different respond to the physical environment of stores and service brand personality that are inherent to the corresponding service interface. Hence, the customers will make a different decision-making when dealing with different service categories. In this aspect, the relationships of variables in the proposed hypothesis appear to work in a different way depending on the exposed service category. 4) The store environment factors influenced on service brand personalities differently by category of service. The factors of store's physical environment are transferred to a brand and were verified to strengthen service brand personalities. In particular, the level of influence on the service brand personality by physical environment differs depending on service category or dimension, which indicates that there is a need to apply a different style of management to a different service category or dimension. It signifies that there needs to be a brand strategy established in order to positively influence the relationship with consumers by utilizing an appropriate brand personality factor depending on different characteristics by service category or dimension. 5) The service brand personalities influenced on the repurchase intention. Especially, the largest influence was made in the sophistication dimension of service brand personality scale; the unique and characteristically appropriate arrangement of physical environment will make customers stay in the service environment for a long time and will lead to give a positive influence on the repurchase intention. 6) The store environment factors influenced on the repurchase intention. Particularly, the largest influence was made on the social factors of store environment. The most intriguing finding is that the service factor among all other environment factors gives the biggest influence to the repurchase intention in most of all service types except fast-food stores. Such result indicates that the customers pay attention to how much the employees try to provide a quality service when they make an evaluation on the service brand. At the same time, it also indicates that the personal factor is directly transmitted to the construction of brand personality. The employees' attitude and behavior are the determinants to establish a service brand personality in the process of enhancing service interface. Hence, there should be a reinforced search for a method to efficiently manage the service staff who has a direct contact with customers in order to make an affirmative improvement of the customers' brand evaluation at the service interface. The findings suggest several managerial implications. 1) Results from the empirical study indicated that store environment factors have a strong positive impact on a service brand personality. To increase customers' repurchase intention of a service brand, the management is required to effectively manage store environment factors and create a friendly brand personality based on the corresponding service environment. 2) Mangers and researchers must understand and recognize that the store environment elements are important marketing tools, and that brand personality influences on consumers' repurchase intention. Based on such result of the study, a service brand could be utilized as an efficient measure to achieve a differentiation by enforcing the elements that are most influential among all other store environments for each service category. Therefore, brand personality established involving various store environments will further reinforce the relationship with customers through the elevated brand identification of which utilization to induce repurchase decision can be used as an entry barrier. 3) The study identified the store environment as a component of service brand personality for the store's effective communication with consumers. For this, all communication channels should be maintained with consistency and an integrated marketing communication should be executed to efficiently approach to a larger number of customers. Mangers and researchers must find strategies for aligning decisions about store environment elements with the retailers' marketing and store personality objectives. All ambient, design, and social factors need to be orchestrated so that consumers can take an appropriate store personality. In this study, the induced results from the previous studies were extended to the service industry so as to identify the customers' decision making process that leads to repurchase intention and a result similar to those of the previous studies. The findings suggested several theoretical and managerial implications. However, the situation that only one service brand served as the subject of analysis for each service category, and the situation that correlations among store environment elements were not identified, as well as the problem of representation in selection of samples should be considered and supplemented in the future when further studies are conducted. In addition, various antecedents and consequences of brand personality must be looked at in the aspect of the service environment for further research.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.51-89
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• 2007

INTRODUCTION Due to the high broadband internet penetration rate and its group-oriented culture, various types of online communities operate in Korea. This study use 'Uses and Gratification Approach, and argue that members' usage-needs satisfaction with brand community is an important factor for promoting community commitment. Based on previous studies identifying the effect of brand image on consumers' responses to various marketing stimuli, this study hypothesizes that brand image can be a moderate variable affecting the relationship between usage-needs satisfaction with brand community and members' commitment to brand community. This study analyzes the influence of usage-needs satisfaction on brand community commitment and how apparel brand image affects the relationships between usage-needs satisfactions and community commitments. The hypotheses of this study are proposed as follows. H1-3: The usage-needs satisfaction of apparel brand community (interest, transaction, relationship needs) influences emotional (H1), continuous (H2), and normative (H3) commitments to apparel brand communities. H4-6: Apparel brand image has a moderating effect on the relationship between usage-needs satisfaction and emotional (H4), continuous (H5), and normative (H6) commitments to apparel brand communities. METHODS Brand communities founded by non-company affiliates were excluded and emphasis was placed instead on communities created by apparel brand companies. Among casual apparel brands registered in 6 Korean portal sites in August 2003, a total of 9 casual apparel brand online communities were chosen, depending on the level of community activity and apparel brand image. Data from 317 community members were analyzed by exploratory factor analysis, moderated regression analysis, ANOVA, and scheffe test. Among 317 respondents answered an online html-type questionnaire, 80.5% were between 16 to 25 years old. There were a total of 150 respondents from apparel brand communities(n=3) recording higher-than-average brand image scores (Mean > 3.75) and a total of 162 respondents from apparel brand communities(n=6) recording lower-than-average brand image scores(Mean < 3.75). In this study, brand community commitment was measured by a 5-point Likert scale: emotional, continuous and normative commitment. The degree of usage-needs satisfaction (interest, transaction, relationship needs) was measured on a 5-point Likert scale. The level of brand image was measured by a 5-point Likert scale: strength, favorability, and uniqueness of brand associations. RESULTS In the results of exploratory factor analysis, the three usage-needs satisfactions with brand community were classified as interest, transaction, and relationship needs. Brand community commitment was also divided into the multi-dimensional factors: emotional, continuous, and normative commitments. The regression analysis (using a stepwise method) was used to test the influence of 3 independent variables (interest-needs satisfaction, transaction-needs, and relationship-needs satisfactions) on the 3 dependent variables (emotional, continuous and normative commitments). The three types of usage-needs satisfactions are positively associated with the three types of commitments to apparel brand communities. Therefore, hypothesis 1, 2, and 3 were significantly supported. Moderating effects of apparel brand image on the relationship between usage-needs satisfaction and brand community commitments were tested by moderated regression analysis. The statistics result showed that the influence of transaction-needs on emotional commitment was significantly moderated by apparel brand image. In addition, apparel brand image had moderating effects on the relationship between relationship-needs satisfaction and emotional, continuous and normative commitments to apparel brand communities. However, there were not significant moderate effects of apparel brand image on the relationships between interest-needs satisfaction and 3 types of commitments (emotional, continuous and normative commitments) to apparel brand communities. In addition, the influences of transaction-needs satisfaction on 2 types of commitments (continuous and normative commitments) were not significantly moderated by apparel brand image. Therefore, hypothesis 4, 5 and 6 were partially supported. To explain the moderating effects of apparel brand image, four cross-tabulated groups were made by averages of usage-needs satisfaction (interest-needs satisfaction avg. M=3.09, transaction-needs satisfaction avg. M=3.46, relationship-needs satisfaction M=1.62) and the average apparel brand image (M=3.75). The average scores of commitments in each classified group are presented in Tables and Figures. There were significant differences among four groups. As can be seen from the results of scheffe test on the tables, emotional commitment in community group with high brand image was higher than one in community group with low brand image when transaction-needs satisfaction was high. However, when transaction-needs satisfaction was low, there was not any difference between the community group with high brand image and community group with low brand image regarding emotional commitment to apparel brand communities. It means that emotional commitment didn't increase significantly without high satisfaction of transaction-needs, despite the high apparel brand image. In addition, when apparel brand image was low, increase in transaction-needs did not lead to the increase in emotional commitment. Therefore, the significant relationship between transaction-needs satisfaction and emotional commitment was found in only brand communities with high apparel brand image, and the moderating effect of apparel brand image on this relationship between two variables was found in the communities with high satisfaction of transaction-needs only. Statistics results showed that the level of emotional commitment is related to the satisfaction level of transaction-needs, while overall response is related to the level of apparel brand image. We also found that the role of apparel brand image as a moderating factor was limited by the level of transaction-needs satisfaction. In addition, relationship-needs satisfaction brought significant increase in emotional commitment in both community groups (high and low levels of brand image), and the effect of apparel brand image on emotional commitment was significant in both community groups (high and low levels of relationship-needs satisfaction). Especially, the effect of brand image was greater when the level of relationship-needs satisfaction was high. in contrast, increase in emotional commitment responding to increase in relationship-needs satisfaction was greater when apparel brand image is high. The significant influences of relationship-needs satisfaction on community commitments (continuous and normative commitments) were found regardless of apparel brand image(in both community groups with low and high brand image). However, the effects of apparel brand image on continuous and normative commitments were found in only community group with high satisfaction level of relationship-needs. In the case of communities with low satisfaction levels of relationship needs, apparel brand image marginally increases continuous and normative commitments. Therefore, we could not find the moderating effect of apparel brand image on the relationship between relationship-needs satisfaction and continuous and normative commitments in community groups with low satisfaction levels of relationship needs, CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS From the results of this study, we draw several conclusions; First, the increases in usage-needs satisfactions through apparel brand communities result in the increases in commitments to apparel brand communities, wheres the degrees of such relationship depends on the level of apparel brand image. That is, apparel brand image is a moderating factor strengthening the relationship between usage-needs satisfaction and commitment to apparel brand communities. In addition, the effect of apparel brand image differs, depending on the level and types of community usage-needs satisfactions. Therefore, marketers of apparel brand companies must determine the appropriate usage-needs, depending on the type of commitment they wish to increase and the level of their apparel brand image, to promote member's commitments to apparel brand communities. Especially, relationship-needs satisfaction was very important factor for increasing emotional, continuous and normative commitments to communities. However the level of relationship-needs satisfaction was lower than interest-needs and transaction-needs. satisfaction. According to previous study on apparel brand communities, relationship-need satisfaction was strongly related to member's intention of participation in their communities. Therefore, marketers need to develope various strategies in order to increase the relationship- needs as well as interest and transaction needs. In addition, despite continuous commitment was higher than emotional and normative commitments, all types of commitments to apparel brand communities had scores lower than 3.0 that was mid point in 5-point scale. A Korean study reported that the level of members' commitment to apparel brand community influenced customers' identification with a brand and brand purchasing behavior. Therefore, marketers should try to increase members' usage-needs satisfaction and apparel brand image as the necessary conditions for bringing about community commitments. Second, marketers should understand that they should keep in mind that increasing the level of community usage needs (transaction and relationship) is most effective in raising commitment when the level of apparel brand image is high, and that increasing usage needs (transaction needs) satisfaction in communities with low brand image might not be as effective as anticipated. Therefore, apparel companies with desirable brand image such as luxury designer goods firms need to create formal online brand communities (as opposed to informal communities with rudimentary online contents) to satisfy transaction and relationship needs systematically. It will create brand equity through consumers' increased emotional, continuous and normative commitments. Even though apparel brand is very famous, emotional commitment to apparel brand communities cannot be easily increased without transaction-needs satisfaction. Therefore famous fashion brand companies should focus on developing various marketing strategies to increase transaction-needs satisfaction.