• 한국유통학회지:유통연구
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• 제16권1호
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• pp.141-177
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• 2011

기존의 확산관련 연구들은 대부분이 구전 커뮤니케이션의 효용성에 치중하여 개인단위의 변수를 사용하는 경향이 많았다 (Iacobucci 1996; Midgley 외 1992). 반면 구전의 선행 변수로써 네트워크의 구조적 특성을 소비자의 집단문화적 성향에 기초하여 조사한 연구는 찾아보기 어렵다. 본 연구는 이같은 연구배경 하에서 네트워크의 구조적 특성과 소비자의 구전간의 관계를 연관시켜 비교문화적으로 접근하려고 하였다. 본 연구에서 추구하는 주요 목적은 한국과 중국 소비자를 대상으로 사회적 네트워크 형태에 따른 구전효과를 규명하려는 것이며, 네트워크와 구전 효과와의 관계에 영향을 미치는 조절변수로써 문화적 가치관의 역할을 검증하려고 하였다. 구체적인 연구목적은 다음과 같다. 첫째, 사회적 네트워크 관련 이론들을 바탕으로 한국과 중국 소비자들을 대상으로 네트워크의 구조적 특성들 (예: 유대강도, 중심성, 범위)이 구전의 효과 (구전 의향 및 구전 정보의 질)에 어떠한 영향을 미치는지를 규명한다. 둘째, 사회적 네트워크 특성이 구전효과에 미치는 영향에 있어서 문화적 가치 (불확실성 회피 성향, 개인주의성향)가 조절 역할을 하는지를 규명한다. 셋째, 사회적 네트워크 특성과 구전효과의 선행변수로써 소비자 개인의 혁신 성향의 역할을 규명한다. 분석 결과, 한국과 중국 소비자들은 공통적으로 네트워크 유대강도와 중심성은 구전의향에 유의한 영향을 보였으나 네트워크 범위는 두집단 모두 유의하게 나타나지 않았다. 반면, 한, 중 소비자 공통적으로 불확실성회피 성향은 네트워크범위와 상호작용을 함으로써 구전의향에 조절역할을 하는 것으로 나타났다. 마지막으로 소비자의 혁신성향은 한중 두 소비자 집단에서 공통적으로 네트워크 특성 (중심성)과 구전효과(구전정보의 질) 에 유의하게 긍정적 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 한중 양국의 네트워크 특성을 비교한 결과 한국이 중국보다 유대강도, 중심성, 범위에서 모두 유의하게 더 높은 점수를 보였으며, 불확실성회피 성향 또한 한국 소비자가 중국보다 유의하게 높은 것으로 나타났다.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• 제19권4호
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• pp.125-148
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• 2009

UGC(User Generated Contents) is emerging as the center of e-business in the web 2.0 era. The trend reflects changing roles of users in production and consumption of contents on websites and helps us to understand new strategies of websites such as web portals and social network websites. Nowadays, we consume contents created by other non-professional users for both utilitarian (e.g., knowledge) and hedonic values (e.g., fun). Also, contents produced by ourselves (e.g., photo, video) are posted on websites so that our friends, family, and even the public can consume those contents. This means that non-professionals, who used to be passive audience in the past, are now creating contents and share their UGCs with others in the Web. Accessible media, tools, and applications have also reduced difficulty and complexity in the process of creating contents. Realizing that users create plenty of materials which are very interesting to other people, media companies (i.e., web portals and social networking websites) are adjusting their strategies and business models accordingly. Increased demand of UGC may lead to website visits which are the source of benefits from advertising. Therefore, they put more efforts into making their websites open platforms where UGCs can be created and shared among users without technical and methodological difficulties. Many websites have increasingly adopted new technologies such as RSS and openAPI. Some have even changed the structure of web pages so that UGC can be seen several times to more visitors. This mainstream of UGCs on websites indicates that acquiring more UGCs and supporting participating users have become important things to media companies. Although those companies need to understand why general users have shown increasing interest in creating and posting contents and what is important to them in the process of productions, few research results exist in this area to address these issues. Also, behavioral process in creating video UGCs has not been explored enough for the public to fully understand it. With a solid theoretical background (i.e., theory of implementation intentions), parts of our proposed research model mirror the process of user behaviors in creating video contents, which consist of intention to upload, intention to edit, edit, and upload. In addition, in order to explain how those behavioral intentions are developed, we investigated influences of antecedents from three motivational perspectives (i.e., intrinsic, editing software-oriented, and website's network effect-oriented). First, from the intrinsic motivation perspective, we studied the roles of self-expression, enjoyment, and social attention in forming intention to edit with preferred editing software or in forming intention to upload video contents to preferred websites. Second, we explored the roles of editing software for non-professionals to edit video contents, in terms of how it makes production process easier and how it is useful in the process. Finally, from the website characteristic-oriented perspective, we investigated the role of a website's network externality as an antecedent of users' intention to upload to preferred websites. The rationale is that posting UGCs on websites are basically social-oriented behaviors; thus, users prefer a website with the high level of network externality for contents uploading. This study adopted a longitudinal research design; we emailed recipients twice with different questionnaires. Guided by invitation email including a link to web survey page, respondents answered most of questions except edit and upload at the first survey. They were asked to provide information about UGC editing software they mainly used and preferred website to upload edited contents, and then asked to answer related questions. For example, before answering questions regarding network externality, they individually had to declare the name of the website to which they would be willing to upload. At the end of the first survey, we asked if they agreed to participate in the corresponding survey in a month. During twenty days, 333 complete responses were gathered in the first survey. One month later, we emailed those recipients to ask for participation in the second survey. 185 of the 333 recipients (about 56 percentages) answered in the second survey. Personalized questionnaires were provided for them to remind the names of editing software and website that they reported in the first survey. They answered the degree of editing with the software and the degree of uploading video contents to the website for the past one month. To all recipients of the two surveys, exchange tickets for books (about 5,000~10,000 Korean Won) were provided according to the frequency of participations. PLS analysis shows that user behaviors in creating video contents are well explained by the theory of implementation intentions. In fact, intention to upload significantly influences intention to edit in the process of accomplishing the goal behavior, upload. These relationships show the behavioral process that has been unclear in users' creating video contents for uploading and also highlight important roles of editing in the process. Regarding the intrinsic motivations, the results illustrated that users are likely to edit their own video contents in order to express their own intrinsic traits such as thoughts and feelings. Also, their intention to upload contents in preferred website is formed because they want to attract much attention from others through contents reflecting themselves. This result well corresponds to the roles of the website characteristic, namely, network externality. Based on the PLS results, the network effect of a website has significant influence on users' intention to upload to the preferred website. This indicates that users with social attention motivations are likely to upload their video UGCs to a website whose network size is big enough to realize their motivations easily. Finally, regarding editing software characteristic-oriented motivations, making exclusively-provided editing software more user-friendly (i.e., easy of use, usefulness) plays an important role in leading to users' intention to edit. Our research contributes to both academic scholars and professionals. For researchers, our results show that the theory of implementation intentions is well applied to the video UGC context and very useful to explain the relationship between implementation intentions and goal behaviors. With the theory, this study theoretically and empirically confirmed that editing is a different and important behavior from uploading behavior, and we tested the behavioral process of ordinary users in creating video UGCs, focusing on significant motivational factors in each step. In addition, parts of our research model are also rooted in the solid theoretical background such as the technology acceptance model and the theory of network externality to explain the effects of UGC-related motivations. For practitioners, our results suggest that media companies need to restructure their websites so that users' needs for social interaction through UGC (e.g., self-expression, social attention) are well met. Also, we emphasize strategic importance of the network size of websites in leading non-professionals to upload video contents to the websites. Those websites need to find a way to utilize the network effects for acquiring more UGCs. Finally, we suggest that some ways to improve editing software be considered as a way to increase edit behavior which is a very important process leading to UGC uploading.