• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.283-290
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• 2023

This study investigates the influential factors on online word-of-mouth (eWOM) intentions towards educational tourist destinations, primarily focusing on Korean universities and Chinese tourists. It reveals a positive correlation between eWOM intentions and the desire to enroll in these institutions. The significance of eWOM for attracting Chinese students elucidates the importance of establishing a strong brand image and ensuring high levels of tourist satisfaction. Moreover, social media users who travel for education purposes were found to emphasize self-image consistency and conspicuous self-expression. This research underscores the utility of leveraging social media to enhance the perception of educational tourist attractions, promoting these destinations, and stimulating eWOM, thereby enriching the understanding of the strategic use of social media in international student recruitment.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.355-367
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• 2014

The purpose of this research is to find the specific structure with factors that affect online game users' positive word of mouth(WOM) for online game companies to maintain existing and new users. In previous studies the influence of characteristics of online games and attributes of users on intention to play online games is mainly focused on. However online games are products with communication on network, so that critical mass through diffusion as well as the use of product by individual consumers is important issues. Therefore, it is necessary to consider network externality effect that the more value can be obtained by more game users. The authors verified that the influence of the variables like social mass and critical mass, affecting consumers' attitude and WOM. According to the research results, social norm and critical mass have significant influence on positive attitude and WOM intention for online games. Another results verified that social norm and users' attitude affect positive WOM intention directly. These results suggest managerial implication regarding social norm and critical mass to online game companies that desire for WOM to get more online game users.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.79-92
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• 2013

Word-of-mouths (WOMs) are now an important information source for purchase decision. Due to the advance in internet technology, people now can share online their consumption experience, both positive and negative, to others. The WOMs may diffuse to not only their friends but also enormous online users. When consumers dissatisfy the product or service, they may share the dissatisfactory experience to others as WOM, which may bring out discussions for the product or service. The discussions on the negative WOM may help to communicate the negative information to enormous others, which may damage the sale of the product or service. The diffusion and life cycle of negative WOM is an important issue for managers. However, few studies focus on it. Thus, the current study focuses on the discussion pattern and life cycle of negative WOMs by observing the 782 discussion articles in a large online community.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.88-98
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• 2024

With the growing preference among Chinese consumers for purchasing beauty products through social media networks (SNS), influencer marketing has recently emerged as a crucial strategy for maximizing word-of-mouth effects. This study aims to ascertain the impact of SNS beauty influencers' characteristics on trustworthiness and consumers' intentions to engage in word-of-mouth promotion. Furthermore, the study seeks to explore the moderating role of consumer involvement in the relationship between SNS beauty influencer characteristics and the trust consumers place in them. As part of an empirical analysis, an online survey was administered to 259 Chinese female consumers who had previously purchased beauty products through influencers on SNS. The data gathered were scrutinized by conducting multiple and hierarchical regression analysis to test the proposed hypotheses. The findings indicated that the attributes of "expertise,"' "intimacy," and "homogeneity" in SNS beauty influencers significantly affect influencer trust, whereas "charm" does not have a significant impact. Moreover, consumer involvement was found to moderate the relationship between SNS beauty influencer characteristics (expertise, intimacy, charm, and homogeneity) and influencer trust. Additionally, influencer trust positively influenced the intention to engage in word-of-mouth activities. These findings signify that leveraging influencers possessing qualities such as expertise, intimacy, and homogeneity can help enhance product exposure, popularity, and sales of the beauty industry. This study contributes valuable insights into the strategic utilization of influencer characteristics in the beauty industry and digital marketing, highlighting their pivotalrole in consumer engagement and the success of marketing strategies.

• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.1-15
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• 2017

Social commerce is a kind of internet shopping mall in which consumers purchase the products with other consumers through mutual interactions including the development of SNS(social network service). Social commerce has expanded rapidly as a mainstream online shopping mall over the past five years driving consumers to purchase more fashion products providing the cheaper prices than open market internet shopping mall. The purpose of this study is to identify the important parameters of social commerce characteristics and consumer characteristics that affect repurchase intention and word-of-mouth intention. A 221 survey questionnaire was distributed to men in their 20's and 30's who live in Seoul metropolitan area. The data were analyzed utilizing Cronbach's ${\alpha}$, factor analysis, and regression analysis using the SPSS 18.0 program. The results revealed, first, that in terms of social commerce characteristics, three variables(website reputation, interactivity, and product scarcity) influenced repurchase intention. Among them, website reputation identified as the most important factor influencing repurchase intention and word-of-mouth intention. Second, with regard to consumer characteristics, interest and a tendency toward impulse buying affected the repurchase intention, and interest and internet shopping experience have influenced the word-of-mouth intention. Among three variables interest in social commerce identified as the key factor affecting both repurchase intention and word-of-mouth intention. The results of the study provide the practical implications and suggest the business strategies to enhance social commerce in the future by identifying the key social commerce characteristics and consumer characteristics that influence male consumers' buying behaviors.

• Journal of Korea Game Society
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.193-202
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• 2014

This study is based on previous studies on the various types of games and analyse the effects of the characteristics of mobile social network games on online word-of-mouth of game users. As a result, it was revealed that commitment increased because of the features of not needing to access continuously, not interrupted by reciprocal relationship among users, a particular time and place. However, in the process of the interaction with the media, perceived individual social presence and asynchrony that did not need to continue to access, they did not affect satisfaction and respectively. In addition, this commitment had more effects on online word-of-mouth than satisfaction. Comprehensive the above, the research achievement of this study may be expected to contribute to the ongoing development of future domestic mobile social network game industry.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.778-790
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• 2012

This research categorizes and analyzes different online fashion store studies conducted over the past 10 years based on study type. The results are as follows. First, it was found that 116 studies out of 118 studies on online fashion stores conducted from 2000 to 2012 were based on PC web. Second, the studies on PC web-based fashion stores were reclassified into 9 different categories based on their topics: purchase behavior, word-of-mouth behavior, website, and product information presentation as well as products for sale, return behavior, customer service, system, present condition, marketing strategy, and promotions. However, mobile web-based studies were categorized into 2 categories of introduction of the fashion stores and purchase behavior. Third, we reclassified the studies chronologically to observe studies conducted at different times. In the early phase (in addition to studies on purchase behavior) studies on present condition, marketing strategy, and website constituted the majority of studies conducted because the field research was just starting to grow; however, studies conducted in the latter phase showed new patterns of study, such as word-of-mouth effect, and return behavior. Future studies conducted on competitive PC web-based fashion stores require a more specific classification of studies (according to their purpose) to develop an effective marketing strategy.

• Journal of Service Research and Studies
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.1-17
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• 2024

One of the most important decisions for managers in the online banner advertising industry, is to choose the best banner alternative for exposure to customers. Since it is difficult to know the click probability of each banner alternative in advance, managers must experiment with multiple alternatives, estimate the click probability of each alternative based on customer clicks, and find the optimal alternative. In this reinforcement learning process, the main decision problem is to find the optimal balance between the level of exploitation strategy that utilizes the accumulated estimated click probability information and exploration strategy that tries new alternatives to find potentially better options. In this study we analyze the impact of word-of-mouth effects and the number of alternatives on the optimal exploration-exploitation strategies. More specifically, we focus on the word-of-mouth effect, where the click-through rate of the banner increases as customers promote the related product to those around them after clicking the exposed banner, and add it to the overall reinforcement learning process. We analyze our problem by employing the Multi-Armed Bandit model, and the analysis results show that the larger the word-of-mouth effect and the fewer the number of banner alternatives, the higher the optimal exploration level of advertising reinforcement learning. We find that as the probability of customers clicking on the banner increases due to the word-of-mouth effect, the value of the previously accumulated estimated click-through rate knowledge decreases, and therefore the value of exploring new alternatives increases. Additionally, when the number of advertising alternatives is small, a larger increase in the optimal exploration level was observed as the magnitude of the word-of-mouth effect increased. This study provides meaningful academic and managerial implications at a time when online word-of-mouth and its impact on society and business is becoming more important.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.155-168
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• 2013

This study describes consumers' movie choices in conjunction with other group members and attempts to reassess the effect of the online word of mouth (WOM) source in a joint decision context. The tendency of many people to go to movies in groups has been mentioned in previous literature but there is no modeling research that studies movie choice from the group decision perspective. We found that ignoring the group movie-going perspective can result in a misunderstanding, especially underestimation of genre preference and the impact of the WOM variables. Most of the studies to measure online WOM effects were done at the aggregate level, and the role of online WOM variables(volume vs valence) is mixed in the literature. We postulate that group-level analysis might offer insight to resolve these mixed understanding of WOM effects in the literature. We implemented the study via a random effect model with group-level heterogeneity. Romance, drama, and action were selected as genre variables; valence and volume were selected as online WOM variables. A choice-based conjoint survey was used for data collection and the models was estimated via Bayesian MCMC method. The empirical results show that (i) both genre and online WOM are important variables when consumers choose movies, especially as group, and (ii) the WOM valence effect are amplified more than the volume effect does as individuals are engaged in group decision. This research contributes to the literature in several ways. First, we investigate movie choice from a group movie-going perspective that is more realistic and consistent with the market behavior. Secondly, the study sheds new light on the WOM effect. At group-level, both valence and volume significantly affect movie choices, which adds to the understanding of the role of online WOM in consumers' movie choice.

• International Journal of Contents
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.80-87
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• 2017

Since the advent of the Internet, and the development of smart devices, people have begun to spend more time in online platforms; this phenomenon has created a large number of online Words of Mouth (WOM) daily. Under these changes, one of the important aspects to consider is the conformity effect in online WOM; that is, whether an individual's own opinion would be influenced by the majority opinion of other people. This study, therefore, investigates whether there is the conformity effect in online product ratings for Amazon.com using the method called Markov Chain analysis. Markov Chain analysis considers the stochastic process that satisfies the Markov property, and we assume that the generation of online product ratings follows the process. Under the assumption that people are usually independent when they express their opinion in online platforms, we analyze the interdependency among rating sequences, and we find weak evidence that there exists the conformity effect in online product rating. This suggests that people who leave online product ratings consider others' opinions.