• 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 Practical Agriculture & Fisheries Research
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.193-206
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• 2014

The objectives of the project are to increase farmers' income through GAP and to reduce the loss of agricultural produce, for which the Korean partner takes a role of transferring needed technologies to the project site. To accomplish the project plan, it is set to implement the project with six components: construction of buildings, installation of agricultural facilities, establishment of demonstration farms, dispatching experts, conducting training program in Korea and provision of equipments. The Project Management Committee and the Project Implementation Team are consisted of Korean experts and senior officials from Department of Agriculture, Myanmar that managed the project systematically to ensure the success of the project. The process of the project are; the ceremony of laying the foundation and commencing the construction of training center in April, 2012. The Ribbon Cutting Ceremony for the completion of GAP Training Center was successfully held under PMC (MOAI, GAPI/ARDC) arrangement in SAl, Naypyitaw on June 17, 2012. The Chairman of GAPI, Dr. Sang Mu Lee, Director General U Kyaw Win of DOA, officials and staff members from Korea and Myanmar, teachers and students from SAl attended the ceremony. The team carried out an inspection and fixing donors' plates on donated project machineries, agro-equipments, vehicles, computers and printer, furniture, tools and so forth. Demonstration farm for paddy rice, fruits and vegetables was laid out in April, 2012. Twenty nine Korean rice varieties and many Korean vegetable varieties were introduced into GAP Project farm to check the suitability of the varieties under Myanmar growing conditions. Paddy was cultivated three times in DAR and twice in SAl. In June 2012, vinyl houses were started to be constructed for raising seedlings and finished in December 2012. Fruit orchard for mango, longan and dragon fruit was established in June, 2012. Vegetables were grown until successful harvest and the harvested produce was used for panel testing and distribution in January 2013. Machineries for postharvest handling systems were imported in November 2012. Setting the washing line for vegetables were finished and the system as run for testing in June 2013. New water tanks, pine lines, pump house and electricity were set up in October 2013.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.29-54
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• 2012

Recently, as film has been admitted as the artistic merit and higher value-added business, the past studies on film have been lively carried on various fields. Especially, the film business is thought to be value-added business and has explored the causes of influencing spectators. However, there are no researches enough to explain what induces the choice and diffusion of the film. The film is not only hedonic products but also typical example of experiential products. So how to process film formation plays important roles in explaining the procedures of forming preference on the film and the movies spread more widely. But the great part of study of films has been concentrated on exploring hedonic factors of influencing spectator's choice. Until now there is not enough study for the relationship between experiential information processing and film preference. To explain film's preference, our study focuses on preference fluency and processing fluency that can provide an insight for our question about the relationship. In this article, to explain the procedures of processing experiential information and forming preference on the film, our study focuses on finding the relationship between film's processing fluency and film's preference fluency and explores the factors that affect film's processing fluency. To achieve the goal of this study, we distinguish factors of film's conceptual fluency from factors of film's perceptual fluency and explore the paths from the factors to film's preference fluency. The factors which have effects on perceptual fluency are hypothesized to be distinction of image expression, distinction of sound expression, correspondence between actors' image and their role. The factors which have effect on conceptual fluency are supposed to be well-organized story, suitability of lines expression. The experiments in which students were sampled at 'C' university were conducted in 2010 (december). Data collection was proceeded through questionnaires. We test the hypothesized model by using structural equation modeling(Amos 17.0). The fit indices for the model are as follows : x²=416.266(df=213, p=0.00), GFI=0.855, AGFI=0.812, RMSEA =0.069, IFI=O.925, CFI=0.920, TLI=0.905. According to the guidelines, there is evidence that our measurement model fits data. The results of empirical study are as follows. The path from film's perceptual fluency to film's preference fluency is supported(estimate: 0.223, C.R: 2.641). The path from film's conceptual fluency to film's preference fluency is supported(estimate: 0.397, C.R: 4.863). The path from distinction of image expression to film's perceptual fluency is not supported(estimate: 0.113, C.R: 1.665). The path from distinction of sound expression to film's perceptual fluency is supported (estimate: 0.190, C.R: 2.042). The path from correspondence between actors' image and their role to film's perceptual fluency is supported(estimate: 0.686, C.R: 5.566). The path from well-organized story to film's conceptual fluency is supported(estimate: 0.396, C.R: 4.023). The path from suitability of lines expression to film's conceptual fluency is supported(estimate: 0.536, C.R: 5.441). Concludingly, our study explored the influencing factors of film's processing fluency inducing film's Preference fluency. First, film's perceptual fluency and film's conceptual fluency have positive effects on film's preference fluency. Second, distinction of image expression is not significant on film's perceptual fluency, but distinction of sound expression and image's correspondence of actors' image and their role have positive effects on film's perceptual fluency. Lastly, well-organized story and suitability of lines expression have positive effects on film's conceptual fluency.