• Informatization Policy
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.3-17
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• 2013

As electronic marketplaces grow and a large number of consumers exchange their opinions on products and services on the Internet, many studies have been conducted in the area of online consumer reviews. This paper analyzes the research trend of the online consumer reviews by investigating those studies in an attempt to provide future research directions. Many researchers have focused on the effects of online reviews on consumer behaviors as well as the usefulness of the online reviews. In particular, review contents, characteristics of reviewers/consumers and features of products/services have been identified as influencing factors on the effects of the online consumer reviews. For the review contents, the number and the volume of the contents have increasing effects on the online reviews, while the direction (positive vs. negative) of the contents has resulted in conflicting effects of the review. The reputation and trustfulness of reviewers, consumers' prior knowledge on the products, consumers' product involvement, and types of the products were investigated as these factors influence the effectiveness of the online consumer reviews. Social media (such as Facebook and Twitter) nowadays play an important role to disseminate online reviews among consumers. Thus, it is necessary to study how social media influence the effects of online reviews on consumers. Since some firms abuse the online reviews for their own sakes, we recognize the necessity for empirical studies on the side effects of the online reviews.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.1-20
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• 2022

Researchers are making contradictory claims through the concept of superstars and long tails about how the development of IT technology affects demand distribution. Unlike previous studies that focused on changes in demand from a macro point of view, this study explored whether the relationship between a company's marketing activities and consumer response differs depending on the product location (i.e., superstar vs. long tail) from a micro point of view. Based on the marketing mix framework, hypotheses were developed based on the relevant literature. In the case of empirical analysis, 2,835 daily data from 63 Korean films were tested using the quantile regression method. As a result of the analysis, it was found that the influence of marketing mix factors on sales varies depending on the location of the product. Specifically, the appeal breadth of the film and the effect of owned media are enhanced in superstar products, and the effect of acquisition media in long-tail products is enhanced and the negative effects of competition are mitigated. Unlike previous studies that focused on macroscopic changes in demand distribution, this study suggested marketing activities suitable for practitioners through microscopic analysis.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.134-144
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• 2011

Crossmedia Storytelling is receiving attention as a new style of description in the age of limitless competition and infinite fusion among media. Crossmedia Storytelling specifies a form of storytelling carried out through mixed usage of plural media, such as televisions, movies, and web services. It is different from OSMU strategy in that plays one source of contents according to the characteristics of various media while Crossmedia Storytelling demands users' active participation. Moreover, it is also slightly different from Transmedia Storytelling in the point that narratives of each media are not complete themselves and only through effectively combining plural media can the whole story fully enjoyed. This research aims to analyze how users move among media in terms of Crossmedia contents by examining cases of Swedish interactive drama series , from Australia, and from the United States. To do so, first, the paper looks into the principles of Crossmedia communication and examines that it is based on online word-of-mouth communication, such as viral marketing. As a result, the following was found in the cases of Crossmedia Storytelling: negative stories that arouse users' emotional reactions & users' participation are effective, and the set-up of Sneezer, which causes the knowledge gap, is very important. It was also found that users' participation was actively taking place through online WOM communication in Crossmedia Storytelling.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.27-51
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• 2006

This study is to understand the existing relation-marketing based on a result that social-relationship in market can effect on customer's action with expanding the seller-purchaser relationship, and understanding purchaser-purchaser relationship in the community. The result of this study could be summarized as below: First, the customer-sales person friendly relationship effects respectively on customer satisfaction and loyalty. Second, friendly relationship of customers effects on customer satisfaction and loyalty. Third, customers' satisfaction and trust increases customers loyalty. Considering that they could cause others to re-buy, friendly word of mouth, recommendations, we should know improving customers loyalty about a company(department store) is very important. This study presents not only customers and sales clerks relationship but also developing customer-customer relationship is important as well. From the viewpoint, this study gives the following strategic tactics to companies. First, customer's relationship with sales clerk is not able to be built in a short time unlike discount or gifts. Second, relationship around customers effects on loyalty of the department store, over the relationship of simple customer-sales clerk. Finally, companies, to make a relationship like fabric, should escape a two-level channel, a company to a customer, then recognize a three-level channel, a company to a friendly customer to a neutral or a unfriendly customer. That means a business should use the positive to make the negative or the neutral change their behavior to it.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.100-110
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• 2010

The main roots of CM service contracts include existing customer repurchases and those made by new customers by existing ones. The study on customers and loyalty can be factors to strengthen CM's competitiveness. However, there have been little attempt to study customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. Construction Management (CM), the advanced construction management method, was introduced 15 years ago in the mid 1990's in the domestic market. The aim of this research is to build a model that can predict customer loyalty based on how much customers are satisfied with CM service. To measure customer satisfaction and loyalty, this research surveyed 135 decision-makers who have experienced CM services. Customer satisfaction was tested and analyzed according to different phases: planning, designing, procurement, construction, and post construction. Referral intention was tested based on NPS theory. Customer types were divided into detractors, passively satisfied and promoters according to the tested measurement and multinomial logistic regression between the satisfaction by construction phases and customer types. This research resulted to a model that can predict customer types: detractors, passively satisfied and promoters, which were determined according to satisfaction level. The initial planning phase also revealed which factor is most influential for a customer to become promoter. These results can be used to acquire customer loyalty by managing the satisfaction of customers through a project under an Internet-based environment. Such can provide the needed information in quickly exploring positive and negative word-of-mouth feedbacks.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.63-82
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• 2016

Individuals gather information online to resolve problems in their daily lives and make various decisions about the purchase of products or services. With the revolutionary development of information technology, Web 2.0 has allowed more people to easily generate and use online reviews such that the volume of information is rapidly increasing, and the usefulness and significance of analyzing the unstructured data have also increased. This paper presents an analysis on the lexical features of expert product reviews to determine their influence on consumers' purchasing decisions. The focus was on how unstructured data can be organized and used in diverse contexts through text mining. In addition, diverse lexical features of expert reviews of contents provided by a third-party review site were extracted and defined. Expert reviews are defined as evaluations by people who have expert knowledge about specific products or services in newspapers or magazines; this type of review is also called a critic review. Consumers who purchased products before the widespread use of the Internet were able to access expert reviews through newspapers or magazines; thus, they were not able to access many of them. Recently, however, major media also now provide online services so that people can more easily and affordably access expert reviews compared to the past. The reason why diverse reviews from experts in several fields are important is that there is an information asymmetry where some information is not shared among consumers and sellers. The information asymmetry can be resolved with information provided by third parties with expertise to consumers. Then, consumers can read expert reviews and make purchasing decisions by considering the abundant information on products or services. Therefore, expert reviews play an important role in consumers' purchasing decisions and the performance of companies across diverse industries. If the influence of qualitative data such as reviews or assessment after the purchase of products can be separately identified from the quantitative data resources, such as the actual quality of products or price, it is possible to identify which aspects of product reviews hamper or promote product sales. Previous studies have focused on the characteristics of the experts themselves, such as the expertise and credibility of sources regarding expert reviews; however, these studies did not suggest the influence of the linguistic features of experts' product reviews on consumers' overall evaluation. However, this study focused on experts' recommendations and evaluations to reveal the lexical features of expert reviews and whether such features influence consumers' overall evaluations and purchasing decisions. Real expert product reviews were analyzed based on the suggested methodology, and five lexical features of expert reviews were ultimately determined. Specifically, the "review depth" (i.e., degree of detail of the expert's product analysis), and "lack of assurance" (i.e., degree of confidence that the expert has in the evaluation) have statistically significant effects on consumers' product evaluations. In contrast, the "positive polarity" (i.e., the degree of positivity of an expert's evaluations) has an insignificant effect, while the "negative polarity" (i.e., the degree of negativity of an expert's evaluations) has a significant negative effect on consumers' product evaluations. Finally, the "social orientation" (i.e., the degree of how many social expressions experts include in their reviews) does not have a significant effect on consumers' product evaluations. In summary, the lexical properties of the product reviews were defined according to each relevant factor. Then, the influence of each linguistic factor of expert reviews on the consumers' final evaluations was tested. In addition, a test was performed on whether each linguistic factor influencing consumers' product evaluations differs depending on the lexical features. The results of these analyses should provide guidelines on how individuals process massive volumes of unstructured data depending on lexical features in various contexts and how companies can use this mechanism from their perspective. This paper provides several theoretical and practical contributions, such as the proposal of a new methodology and its application to real data.

• 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.14 no.2
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• pp.65-96
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• 2012

Brand has received much attention from considerable marketing research. When consumers consume product or services, they are exposed to a lot of brand related stimuli. These contain brand personality, brand experience, brand identity, brand communications and so on. A special kind of new crisis occasionally confronting companies' brand management today is the brand related rumor. An important influence on consumers' purchase decision making is the word-of-mouth spread by other consumers and most decisions are influenced by other's recommendations. In light of this influence, firms have reasonable reason to study and understand consumer-to-consumer communication such as brand rumor. The importance of brand rumor to marketers is increasing as the number of internet user and SNS(social network service) site grows. Due to the development of internet technology, people can spread rumors without the limitation of time, space and place. However relatively few studies have been published in marketing journals and little is known about brand rumors in the marketplace. The study of rumor has a long history in all major social science. But very few studies have dealt with the antecedents and consequences of any kind of brand rumor. Rumor has been generally described as a story or statement in general circulation without proper confirmation or certainty as to fact. And it also can be defined as an unconfirmed proposition, passed along from people to people. Rosnow(1991) claimed that rumors were transmitted because people needed to explain ambiguous and uncertain events and talking about them reduced associated anxiety. Especially negative rumors are believed to have the potential to devastate a company's reputation and relations with customers. From the perspective of marketer, negative rumors are considered harmful and extremely difficult to control in general. It is becoming a threat to a company's sustainability and sometimes leads to negative brand image and loss of customers. Thus there is a growing concern that these negative rumors can damage brands' reputations and lead them to financial disaster too. In this study we aimed to distinguish antecedents of brand rumor transmission and investigate the effects of brand rumor characteristics on rumor spread intention. We also found key components in personal acceptance of brand rumor. In contextualist perspective, we tried to unify the traditional psychological and sociological views. In this unified research approach we defined brand rumor's characteristics based on five major variables that had been found to influence the process of rumor spread intention. The five factors of usefulness, source credibility, message credibility, worry, and vividness, encompass multi level elements of brand rumor. We also selected product involvement as a control variable. To perform the empirical research, imaginary Korean 'Kimch' brand and related contamination rumor was created and proposed. Questionnaires were collected from 178 Korean samples. Data were collected from college students who have been experienced the focal product. College students were regarded as good subjects because they have a tendency to express their opinions in detail. PLS(partial least square) method was adopted to analyze the relations between variables in the equation model. The most widely adopted causal modeling method is LISREL. However it is poorly suited to deal with relatively small data samples and can yield not proper solutions in some cases. PLS has been developed to avoid some of these limitations and provide more reliable results. To test the reliability using SPSS 16 s/w, Cronbach alpha was examined and all the values were appropriate showing alpha values between .802 and .953. Subsequently, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted successfully. And structural equation modeling has been used to analyze the research model using smartPLS(ver. 2.0) s/w. Overall, R² of adoption of rumor is .476 and R² of intention of rumor transmission is .218. The overall model showed a satisfactory fit. The empirical results can be summarized as follows. According to the results, the variables of brand rumor characteristic such as source credibility, message credibility, worry, and vividness affect argument strength of rumor. And argument strength of rumor also affects rumor intention. On the other hand, the relationship between perceived usefulness and argument strength of rumor is not significant. The moderating effect of product involvement on the relations between argument strength of rumor and rumor W.O.M intention is not supported neither. Consequently this study suggests some managerial and academic implications. We consider some implications for corporate crisis management planning, PR and brand management. This results show marketers that rumor is a critical factor for managing strong brand assets. Also for researchers, brand rumor should become an important thesis of their interests to understand the relationship between consumer and brand. Recently many brand managers and marketers have focused on the short-term view. They just focused on strengthen the positive brand image. According to this study we suggested that effective brand management requires managing negative brand rumors with a long-term view of marketing decisions.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.1-28
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• 2012

I. Introduction : The purpose of this study is to test empirically hypothetical causality among constructs used in previous studies to build the model of relational market behavior on customers' participation and consumer-brand relationship after introducing theories of relationship marketing, loyalty program, consumer-brand relationship, customers' participation in service marketing as previous studies with regard to relational market behavior, which Bagozzi(1995) and Peterson(1995) commented on constructs and definition suggested by Sheth and Parvatiyar (1995). For this purpose, loyalty program by the service provider, customers' participation and consumer-brand relationship as preceding variables explain relational market behavior defined by Sheth and Parvatiyar(1995). This study proposes that loyalty program as a tool of relationship marketing will be effective in that consumers' participation in marketing relationship results in a narrow range of choice(Sheth and Parvatiyar, 1995) because consumers think that their participation motive result in benefits(Peterson, 1995). Also, it is proposed that the quality of consumer-brand relationship explain the performance of relationship as well as the intermediary effect because the loyalty program could be evaluated based on relationship with customers. We reviewed the variables with regard to performance of relationship based on relation maintain in marketing literature, and then tested our hypotheses related to several performance variables including loyalty and intention of relation maintain based on the previous studies and constructs(Bendapudi and Berry, 1997 ; Bettencourt, 1997 ; Palmatier, Dant, Grewal and Evans, 2006 ; You Jae Yi and Soo Jin Lee, 2006). II. Study Model : Analyses about hypothetical causality were proceeded. The marketing effect of loyalty program on relational market behavior was empirically tested in study regarding a service provider. The research model in according to the path hypotheses (loyalty program ${\rightarrow}$ customers' participation ${\rightarrow}$ consumer-brand relationship ${\rightarrow}$ relational market behavior and loyalty program ${\rightarrow}$ consumer-brand relationship, and loyalty program ${\rightarrow}$ relational market behavior and customers' participation ${\rightarrow}$ consumer-brand relationship, and customers' participation ${\rightarrow}$ relational market behavior) proceeded as an activity for customer relation management was suggested. The main purpose of study is to see if relational market behavior could be brought as a result of developing relationship between consumers and a corporate into being stronger and more valuable when a corporate or a service provider try aggressively to build the relationship with customers (Bettencourt, 1997; Palmatier, Dant, Grewal and Evans, 2006; Sheth and Parvatiyar, 1995). III. Conclusion : The results of research into the membership fitness club, one of service areas with high level of customer participation (Bitner, Faranda, Hubbert and Zeithaml, 1997; Chase, 1978; Kelley, Donnelly, Jr. and Skinner, 1990) are as follows: First, causalities in according to path hypotheses were tested, after the preceding variables affecting relational market behavior and conceptual frame were suggested. In study, all hypotheses were supported as expected. This result confirms the proposition suggested by Sheth and Parvatiyar(1995), who claimed that intention of consumer and corporate to participate in marketing relationship brings high level of marketing productivity. Also, as a corporate or a service provider try aggressively to build relationship with customers, the relationship between consumers and a corporate can be developed into stronger and more valuable one (Bettencourt, 1997; Palmatier, Dant, Grewal and Evans, 2006). This finding supports the logic of relationship marketing. Second, because the question regarding the path hypothesis of consumer-brand relationship ${\rightarrow}$ relational market behavior are still at issue, the further analyses were conducted. In particular, there existed the mediating effects of consumer-brand relationship toward relational market behavior. Also, multiple regressions were conducted to see if which one strongly influences relational market behavior among specific question items with regard to consumer-brand relationship. As a result, the influence between items composing consumer-brand relationship and ones composing relational market behavior was different. Among items composing consumer-brand relationship, intimacy was an influence of sustaining relationship, word of mouth, and recommendation, intimacy and interdependence were influences of loyalty, intimacy and self-connection were influences of tolerance and advice. Notably, commitment among items measuring consumer-brand relationship had the negative influence with relational market behavior. This means that bringing relational market behavior is not consumer-brand relationship without personal commitment, but effort to build customer relationship like intimacy, interdependence, and self-connection. This finding confirms the results of Breivik and Thorbjornsen(2008). They reported that six variables composing the quality of consumer-brand relationship have higher explanation in regression model directly affecting performance of consumer-brand relationship. As a result of empirical analysis, among the constructs with regard to consumer-brand relationship, intimacy(B=0.512), interdependence(B=0.196), and quality of partner(B=0.153) had the effects on relation maintain. On the contrary, self-connection, love and passion, and commitment had little effect and did not show the statistical significance(p<0.05). On the other hand, intimacy(B=0.668) and interdependence(B=0.181) had the high regression estimates on word of mouth and recommendation. Regarding the effect on loyalty, explanation level of the model was high(R2=0.515), intimacy(0.538), interdependence(0.223), and quality of partner(0.177) showed the statistical significance(p<0.05). Furthermore, intimacy(0.441) had the strong effect as well as self-connection(0.201) and interdependence (0.163) had the effect on tolerance and forgive. And these three variables showed effects even on advice and suggestion, intimacy(0.373), self-connection(0.270), interdependence (0.155) respectively. Third, in study with regard to the positive effect(loyalty program ${\rightarrow}$ customers' participation, loyalty program ${\rightarrow}$ consumer-brand relationship, loyalty program ${\rightarrow}$ relational market behavior, customers' participation ${\rightarrow}$ consumer-brand relationship, customers' participation ${\rightarrow}$ relational market behavior, consumer-brand relationship ${\rightarrow}$ relational market behavior), the path hypothesis of customers' participation ${\rightarrow}$ consumer-brand relationship, was supported. The fact that path hypothesis of customers' participation ${\rightarrow}$ consumer-brand relationship was supported confirms assertion by Bitner(1995), Fournier(1994), Sheth and Parvatiyar(1995) about consumer relationship to participate in marketing relationship.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.43-50
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• 2012

This study sets out to examine how a brand image that matches the advertising model has a positive impact on brand attitude and price fairness perceptions. We reviewed the constructs on the basis of previous studies and each of the concepts has been redefined. One such concept, "image congruence," refers to the harmony, fitness, and matching quality of images. For example, how well celebrity advertising model is matches the brand image shows image congruence. Results are summarized as follows: First, the congruence of brand image and sports advertising model has no significant impact on brand attitude certainty and persistence. Second, the individual's brand attitude certainty and brand attitude persistence has a positive impact on the perceptions of price fairness. Third, the congruence of brand image and sports advertising model has a positive impact on the perceptions of price fairness. The first and the third results suggest that the positive impact on the price fairness perceptions is temporary but it has insignificant effects on the formation of brand attitude causing ongoing purchases. In other words, in order to influence consumers' long-term confidence on the brand, improving the quality of products or services has to precede promotional strategies such as advertising. When an advertising model is inappropriate for the brand image, consumers perceive product price changes as a negative issue in the short term. However, in the long term, attitude formation such as consumers' repurchase intentions and word of mouth will be not affected. The second result suggests that an already existing positive brand attitude can contribute more positively to change the perceptions of price fairness. In particular, attitude persistence has greater influence than attitude certainty on the price fairness. It suggests that persistence issues such as the trading period and the frequency of transactions must be managed and controlled because they are more important than the certainty issues such as strength of belief or trust. For example, when a commercial model for expensive sporting goods matches up with the brand image, consumer feels less pressure on the price changes. However, it does not determine the consumer's repeated purchases or sustainable transactions and it also has no absolute impact on the brand trust. In other words, consumer brand attitude should be recognized and approached as a routine strategy in view of the result that it is of great value as a causal variable in the process of consumer decision-making.