• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.131-152
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• 2016

Purpose Mobile phones increase the frequency and speed of communication. The most popular mobile application in Korea is KakaoTalk, one of the mobile instant messenger(MIM) services. Although studying mobile services such as SMS, SNS and SNG suggests drawing upon theories in marketing, consumer behavior, psychology to investigate their personal use, research on MIM is scarce. We designed this paper to fill this gap. More specifically, this study is focused on the relationships among consumers psychological variables related to purchase intention to emoticons in context of MIM. Design/methodology/approach Data was obtained from 310 KakaoTalk users in Korea via questionnaire. The data was analyzed by structural equation modeling in order to verify the relationship between variables in the model. Specifically, this study is designed to examine the structural relationships among perceived benefits, perceived risks, trust in messenger service, system quality, trust in platform, and emoticons purchase intention. Findings The findings of this study are as follow. First, perceived benefits and perceived risks had a significant impact on trust in MIM service(e.g. KakaoTalk). Specifically, while perceived benefits had a positive effect on trust in MIM service, perceived risks had a negative effect on trust in MIM service. Second, trust in messenger service also had a positive impact on system quality. Third, trust in messenger service and system quality had a positive effect on trust in platform(e.g. Kakao platform) directly. Lastly, trust in platform had a positive influence on emoticons purchase intention in KakaoTalk messenger.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.51
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• pp.361-390
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• 2018

Users of KakaoTalk emoticons use Kakao Talk emoticons as means of communicating their emotions in virtual space. Emotional state is represented by design element (auxiliary, color, form, motion) and storytelling element contained in emoticons. The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors of the storytelling and design elements of kakaoTalk emoticons and how they prefer the kakaoTalk emoticons as emotional expression means. In terms of storytelling, crocodiles, peaches, dogs, ducks, lions, moles, and rabbits were made up of ordinary fruits and animals. Most of the emoticons are composed of stories with unique personality, and each story has a complex one by one, which makes it easy for users to approach and use them. In terms of design, I used various auxiliary elements (flame, sweat, tears, runny nose, angry eyes, etc.) to express angry, sincere, nervous, begging, joy, and sadness. The color elements consisted of most of the warm color series with the unique colors (green, red, yellow, pink, white, black, brown, etc.) of emoticon characters regardless of feelings of joy, anger, sadness, pleasure. The form factor is composed of a round shape when expressing factors such as joy and sadness. On the other hand, when FRODO and NEO express sadness and anger, they represent the shape of a rectangle. The motion elements are horizontal, vertical, and oblique expressions of APPEACH, NEO, TUBE, and JAY-G, expressing emotional expressions of sadness, anger, and pleasure. APEACH, TUBE, MUZI & / Shows the dynamic impression of the oblique and the radiation / back / forward / rotation. The anger of TUBE and FRODO shows horizontal / vertical / diagonal and radial motion. As a result of this study, storytelling is structured in accordance with each emoticon character. In terms of design, auxiliary elements such as flame, sweat, and tears are represented by images. The color elements used the unique colors of the character series regardless of the difference of emotion. The form factor represented various movements for each emotion expression. These findings will contribute to the development of communication, emotional design and industrial aspects. Despite the significance of the above paper, I would like to point out that the analysis framework of the storytelling and the semiotic analysis of the supplementary elements are not considered as limitations of the study.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.101-118
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• 2020

The usage of emoticons used in the online environment continues to increase, and also the market for emoticons is growing rapidly. Emoticons go beyond simply conveying the meaning of a message and play various roles such as smooth communication, pursuit of fun, and intimacy. In this study, we first identify the factors that motivate users to use emoticons in an online messenger service, and then determine whether the derived factors have a significant effect on emoticon usage. Furthermore, based on Regulatory Focus Theory, we will distinguish between the group of promotion focus and the group of prevention focus to see how the influence of motives on emoticon usage differs.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.151-158
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• 2020

SNS on the mobile platform is an essential element and tool for communication and has become a part of life for many people. Having been accustomed to non-face-to-face communication, people today have chosen to use emoticons instead of text to express their feelings and the use of emoticons is constantly growing. This is because the emoticons in various styles of drawings and movements can evoke emotional and sentimental reactions in users and express their tastes in addition to feelings. The current study was conducted to analyze the use of initial emoticon characters released by two most leading SNS platforms in Korea--Kakao for Kakao Talk and Naver for Line--and their expansion to various platform businesses. Based on the cases of the two companies, it discussed the development and goals of Korea-made emoticons in the future as cultural contents.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.227-252
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• 2018

The evolution of instant communication has mirrored the development of the Internet and messenger applications are among the most representative manifestations of instant communication technologies. In messenger applications, senders use emoticons to supplement the emotions conveyed in the text of their messages. The fact that communication via messenger applications is not face-to-face makes it difficult for senders to communicate their emotions to message recipients. Emoticons have long been used as symbols that indicate the moods of speakers. However, at present, emoticon-use is evolving into a means of conveying the psychological states of consumers who want to express individual characteristics and personality quirks while communicating their emotions to others. The fact that companies like KakaoTalk, Line, Apple, etc. have begun conducting emoticon business and sales of related content are expected to gradually increase testifies to the significance of this phenomenon. Nevertheless, despite the development of emoticons themselves and the growth of the emoticon market, no suitable emoticon recommendation system has yet been developed. Even KakaoTalk, a messenger application that commands more than 90% of domestic market share in South Korea, just grouped in to popularity, most recent, or brief category. This means consumers face the inconvenience of constantly scrolling around to locate the emoticons they want. The creation of an emoticon recommendation system would improve consumer convenience and satisfaction and increase the sales revenue of companies the sell emoticons. To recommend appropriate emoticons, it is necessary to quantify the emotions that the consumer sees and emotions. Such quantification will enable us to analyze the characteristics and emotions felt by consumers who used similar emoticons, which, in turn, will facilitate our emoticon recommendations for consumers. One way to quantify emoticons use is metadata-ization. Metadata-ization is a means of structuring or organizing unstructured and semi-structured data to extract meaning. By structuring unstructured emoticon data through metadata-ization, we can easily classify emoticons based on the emotions consumers want to express. To determine emoticons' precise emotions, we had to consider sub-detail expressions-not only the seven common emotional adjectives but also the metaphorical expressions that appear only in South Korean proved by previous studies related to emotion focusing on the emoticon's characteristics. We therefore collected the sub-detail expressions of emotion based on the "Shape", "Color" and "Adumbration". Moreover, to design a highly accurate recommendation system, we considered both emotion-technical indexes and emoticon-emotional indexes. We then identified 14 features of emoticon-technical indexes and selected 36 emotional adjectives. The 36 emotional adjectives consisted of contrasting adjectives, which we reduced to 18, and we measured the 18 emotional adjectives using 40 emoticon sets randomly selected from the top-ranked emoticons in the KakaoTalk shop. We surveyed 277 consumers in their mid-twenties who had experience purchasing emoticons; we recruited them online and asked them to evaluate five different emoticon sets. After data acquisition, we conducted a factor analysis of emoticon-emotional factors. We extracted four factors that we named "Comic", Softness", "Modernity" and "Transparency". We analyzed both the relationship between indexes and consumer attitude and the relationship between emoticon-technical indexes and emoticon-emotional factors. Through this process, we confirmed that the emoticon-technical indexes did not directly affect consumer attitudes but had a mediating effect on consumer attitudes through emoticon-emotional factors. The results of the analysis revealed the mechanism consumers use to evaluate emoticons; the results also showed that consumers' emoticon-technical indexes affected emoticon-emotional factors and that the emoticon-emotional factors affected consumer satisfaction. We therefore designed the emoticon recommendation system using only four emoticon-emotional factors; we created a recommendation method to calculate the Euclidean distance from each factors' emotion. In an attempt to increase the accuracy of the emoticon recommendation system, we compared the emotional patterns of selected emoticons with the recommended emoticons. The emotional patterns corresponded in principle. We verified the emoticon recommendation system by testing prediction accuracy; the predictions were 81.02% accurate in the first result, 76.64% accurate in the second, and 81.63% accurate in the third. This study developed a methodology that can be used in various fields academically and practically. We expect that the novel emoticon recommendation system we designed will increase emoticon sales for companies who conduct business in this domain and make consumer experiences more convenient. In addition, this study served as an important first step in the development of an intelligent emoticon recommendation system. The emotional factors proposed in this study could be collected in an emotional library that could serve as an emotion index for evaluation when new emoticons are released. Moreover, by combining the accumulated emotional library with company sales data, sales information, and consumer data, companies could develop hybrid recommendation systems that would bolster convenience for consumers and serve as intellectual assets that companies could strategically deploy.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.16 no.10
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• pp.311-325
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• 2016

The communication via MIM(Mobile Instant Messenger) has unique characteristics; one of them is use of emoticons. Although using emoticons in MIM is getting a lot of attention from business fields and emoticons markets in MIM is growing rapidly, there are little researches focused on emoticons in MIM in consumer behaviors and marketing area. So, the purpose of this study is to fill this theoretical and practical gap. For this purpose, we explore the effect of and trust in MIM system and attitude toward use of emoticons on purchase intention to emotions in MIM. Our study used structural equation modeling analysis; the results showed that perceived benefits and perceived risk to MIM affected trust in MIM system significantly, more specifically, while perceived benefits affected trust in MIM system positively, perceived risk affected trust in MIM system negatively. We also found that perceived usefulness of emoticon in MIM and flow experience influenced attitude toward use of emoticons positively. Lastly, trust in MIM system and attitude toward use of emoticons had positive effect on purchase intention to emoticons in MIM. The implication and limitations of this study are also discussed.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.15 no.12
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• pp.129-140
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• 2015

The objective of this study is mainly to examine factors affecting utilization of graphical emoticons in the environment of mobile messenger. For this purpose, this research identified several determinants including demographic variables that have influences on utilization of graphical emoticons by an overview of prior research on Big 5 model and Uses and Gratification (U & G). An online survey was employed to collect data, and hierarchical regression analysis was used for data analysis. The results showed that females and younger respondents have higher utilization of graphical emoticons than males and the older. The findings also showed that extraversion as personal traits has influences on the utilization. And they indicated that people increase their utilization of graphical emoticons when they want to communicate with others efficiently and succinctly, and to follow the trend. The practical and theoretical implications of the findings in this study are also discussed.