• Asia Marketing Journal
• /
• v.14 no.2
• /
• pp.65-96
• /
• 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.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
• /
• v.19 no.3
• /
• pp.69-98
• /
• 2009

We investigated what factors motivate gamers to participate in a guild and why they continue to be engaged as members of the guild. We find that, based on the result of focus group interviews with MMORPG gamers, social support and self-esteem factors play important roles. Considering both prior research and the focus group interviews we have conducted, we define social support and character control as independent variables. Character identity, guild identity, and self-esteem are proposed as mediating variables while guild flow and game loyalty as dependent variables. Accordingly, we develop the research model and hypotheses, and verify them empirically. Based on our experiences of playing the WoW game, we proposed a research model and conducted focus-group interviews (FGIs). FGIs involve formulating a hypothesis and then collecting some relevant data. FGIs were conducted face-to-face with students of C University in Korea. We formulated structured interview schedules, and the questions were based on our research variables and personal experiences. The questions for the interviews encompassed the following areas: (a) the demographic characteristics of the focus group; (b) the number of years for which respondents had played online games; (c) the motive for starting a game; (d) the number of game-characters assumed by each gamer; (e) the type of game played; and (f) other issues such as the reasons for involvement in the play, the willingness to reuse the game in case new versions were released, etc. On average, it took two hours to interview each of three groups. A primary set of FGIs was conducted with three groups on the premise that there would be some differences caused by character race (Horde vs. Alliance) or by playable server (Normal vs. Combat). With respect to the manner of playing, we found that guild members shared information, felt a sense of belonging, and played computer games for quite a long time through the guild; however, they did not undergo these experiences when playing alone. Gamers who belonged to a specific guild helped other players without expecting compensation for that, freely shared information about the game, gave away items for free, and more generous with other members who made mistakes. The guild members were aware of the existence other members and experienced a sense of belonging through interactions with, and evaluations from, other players. It was clear that social support was shown within the guild and that it played an important role as a major research variable. Based on the results of the first FGIs, a second set of in-depth FGIs was carried out with a focus on the psychology of the individual within the guild and the social community of the guild. The second set of FGIs also focused on the guild's offline meetings. Gamers, over all, recognize the necessity of joining a community, not only off-line but also online world of the guild. They admit that the guild is important for them to easily and conveniently enjoy playing online computer games. The active behavior and positive attitudes of existing guild members can motivate new members of the guild to adapt themselves to the guild environment. They then adopt the same behaviors and attitudes of established guild members. In this manner, the new members of the guild strengthen the bonds with other gamers while feeling a sense of belonging, and developing social identity, thereby. It was discovered that the interaction among guild members and the social support encouraged new gamers to quickly develop a sense of social identity and increase their self-esteem. The guild seemed to play the role of socializing gamers. Sometimes, even in the real world, the guild members helped one another; therefore, the features of the guild also spilled over to the offline environment. We intend to use self-esteem, which was found through the second set of FGIs, as an important research variable. To collect data, an online survey was designed with a questionnaire to be completed by WoW gamers, who belong to a guild. The survey was registered on the best three domestic game-sites: 'WoW playforum,' 'WoW gamemeca,' and 'Wow invent.' The selected items to be measured in the questionnaire were decided based on prior research and data from FGIs. To verify the content of the questionnaire, we carried out a pilot test with the same participants to point out ambiguous questions as a way to ensure maximum accuracy of the survey result. A total of 244 responses were analyzed from the 250 completed questionnaires. The SEM analysis was used to test goodness-of-fit of the model. As a result, we found important results as follows: First, according to the statistics, social support had statistically significant impacts on character control, character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Second, character control had significant effects on character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Third, character identity shows its clear impact on self-esteem and game loyalty. Fourth, guild identity affected self-esteem, guild flow and game loyalty. Fifth, self-esteem had a positive influence on the guild flow. These days, the number of virtual community is rising along with its significance largely because of the nature of the online games. Accordingly, this study is designed to clarify the psychological relationship between gamers within the guild that has been generally established by gamers to play online games together. This study focuses on the relationships in which social support influences guild flow or game loyalty through character control, character identity, guild identity, and self-esteem, which are present within a guild in the MMORPG game environment. The study results are as follows. First, the effects of social support on character control, character identity, guild identity and self-esteem are proven to be statistically significant. It was found that character control improves character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Among the seven variables, social support, which is derived from FGIs, plays an important role in this study. With the active support of other guild members, gamers can improve their ability to develop good characters and to control them. Second, character identity has a positive effect on self-esteem and game loyalty, while guild identity has a significant effect on self-esteem, guild flow and game loyalty. Self-esteem affects guild flow. It was found that the higher the character and guild identities become, the greater the self-esteem is established. Contrary to the findings of prior research, our study results indicate that the relationship between character identity and guild flow is not significant. Rather, it was found that character identity directly affects game players' loyalty. Even though the character identity had no direct effect on increasing guild flow, it has indirectly affected guild flow through self-esteem. The significant relationship between self-esteem and guild flow indicates that gamers achieve flow, i.e., a feeling of pleasure and excitement through social support. Several important implications of this study should be noted. First, both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to conduct this study. Through FGIs, it was observed that both social support and self-esteem are important variables. Second, because guilds had been rarely studied, this research is expected to play an important role in the online community. Third, according to the result, six hypotheses (H1, H5, H6, H7, H8, and H11) setup based on FGIs, were statistically significant; thus, we can suggest the corresponding relationships among the variables as a guideline for follow-up research. Our research is significant as it has following implications: first, the social support of the guild members is important when establishing character control, character identity, guildidentity and self-esteem. It is also a major variable that affects guild flow and game loyalty. Second, character control when improved by social support shows notable influence on the development of character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Third, character identity and guild identity are major factors to help establish gamers' own self-esteem. Fourth, character identity affects guild flow through self-esteem and game loyalty. The gamers usually express themselves through characters; the higher character identity is, the more loyalty a gamer has. Fifth, guild identity, established within the guild, has clear effects on self-esteem, guild flow and game loyalty. Sixth, qualitative and quantitative methods are employed to conduct this study. Based on the results of focus group interviews and SEM analysis, we find that the social support by guild members and psychological factors are significant in strengthening the flow of guild and loyalty to the game. As such, game developers should provide some extra functions for guild community, through which gamers can play online games in collaboration with one another. Also, we suggest that positive self-esteem which is built up through social support can help gamers achieve higher level of flow and satisfaction, which will consequently contribute to minimizing the possibility for the players to develop negative attitude toward the guild they belong to.

• Journal of Korean Home Economics Education Association
• /
• v.24 no.4
• /
• pp.133-144
• /
• 2012

The purpose of this study was to investigate Home Economics(HE) teachers' stages of concern, levels of use, and needs about the practical reasoning instruction focusing on the Concerns Based Adoption Model(CBAM). Questionnaires were administrated to HE teachers who worked for middle or high school in Korea and used HE textbooks according to the revised 2007 HE curriculum through mailing and visiting HE teacher training centers. 350 data collected from the responses were finally analyzed using SPSS 12.0. The results of the study were as follows: First, HE teachers' stages of concern about the Practical Reasoning Instruction(PRI) were demonstrated by the following order: awareness stage 0(97.05%), informational stage 1(87.06%), personal stage 2(86.23%), management stage 3(79.85%), refocusing stage 6(63.22%), consequence stage 4(61.26%), and collaboration stage 5(60.12%). Second, HE teachers' levels of use for PRI were demonstrated by the following order: preparation level 2(30.3%), orientation level 1(18.30%), refinement level 5 (18.30%), mechanical level 3: (16.0%), routine level 4(10.09%), nonuse level 0(4.0%), integration level 6(1.70%), and renewal level 7(0.60%). Third, needs for HE teachers' practical reasoning process were shown as the following order: '(O)Outline and implement a plan for action'(1.89), '(A)Analyze choices and consequences'(1.75), '(N)Note the results of your action(s)'(1.57), '(E)Evaluate information needed to solve the problem'(1.44), '(R)Recognize the problem'(1.39), and '(S)Select the best choices'(1.36).

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
• /
• v.15 no.3
• /
• pp.79-90
• /
• 2014

User authentication based on ID and PW has been widely used. As the Internet has become a growing part of people' lives, input times of ID/PW have been increased for a variety of services. People have already learned enough to perform the authentication procedure and have entered ID/PW while ones are unconscious. This is referred to as the adaptive unconscious, a set of mental processes incoming information and producing judgements and behaviors without our conscious awareness and within a second. Most people have joined up for various websites with a small number of IDs/PWs, because they relied on their memory for managing IDs/PWs. Human memory decays with the passing of time and knowledges in human memory tend to interfere with each other. For that reason, there is the potential for people to enter an invalid ID/PW. Therefore, these characteristics above mentioned regarding of user authentication with ID/PW can lead to human vulnerabilities: people use a few PWs for various websites, manage IDs/PWs depending on their memory, and enter ID/PW unconsciously. Based on the vulnerability of human factors, a variety of information leakage attacks such as phishing and pharming attacks have been increasing exponentially. In the past, information leakage attacks exploited vulnerabilities of hardware, operating system, software and so on. However, most of current attacks tend to exploit the vulnerabilities of the human factors. These attacks based on the vulnerability of the human factor are called social-engineering attacks. Recently, malicious social-engineering technique such as phishing and pharming attacks is one of the biggest security problems. Phishing is an attack of attempting to obtain valuable information such as ID/PW and pharming is an attack intended to steal personal data by redirecting a website's traffic to a fraudulent copy of a legitimate website. Screens of fraudulent copies used for both phishing and pharming attacks are almost identical to those of legitimate websites, and even the pharming can include the deceptive URL address. Therefore, without the supports of prevention and detection techniques such as vaccines and reputation system, it is difficult for users to determine intuitively whether the site is the phishing and pharming sites or legitimate site. The previous researches in terms of phishing and pharming attacks have mainly studied on technical solutions. In this paper, we focus on human behaviour when users are confronted by phishing and pharming attacks without knowing them. We conducted an attack experiment in order to find out how many IDs/PWs are leaked from pharming and phishing attack. We firstly configured the experimental settings in the same condition of phishing and pharming attacks and build a phishing site for the experiment. We then recruited 64 voluntary participants and asked them to log in our experimental site. For each participant, we conducted a questionnaire survey with regard to the experiment. Through the attack experiment and survey, we observed whether their password are leaked out when logging in the experimental phishing site, and how many different passwords are leaked among the total number of passwords of each participant. Consequently, we found out that most participants unconsciously logged in the site and the ID/PW management dependent on human memory caused the leakage of multiple passwords. The user should actively utilize repudiation systems and the service provider with online site should support prevention techniques that the user can intuitively determined whether the site is phishing.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
• /
• v.14 no.12
• /
• pp.1102-1139
• /
• 2002

A review on the papers published in the Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigerating Engineering in 2000 and 2001 has been done. Focus has been put on current status of research in the aspect of heating, cooling, ventilation, sanitation and building environment. The conclusions are as follows. (1) Most of fundamental studies on fluid flow were related with heat transportation of facilities. Drop formation and rivulet flow on solid surfaces were interesting topics related with condensation augmentation. Research on micro environment considering flow, heat, humidity was also interesting for comfortable living environment. It can be extended considering biological aspects. Development of fans and blowers of high performance and low noise were continuing topics. Well developed CFD technologies were widely applied for developing facilities and their systems. (2) Most of papers related with heat transfer analysis and heat exchanger shows dealt with convection, evaporation, and channel flow for the design application of heat exchanger. The numerical heat transfer simulation studies have been peformed and reported to show heat transfer characteristics. Experimental as well as numerical studies on heat exchanger were reported, while not many papers are available for the system analysis including heat exchanger. (3) A review of the recent studies on heat pump system shows that performance analysis and control of heat pump have been peformed by various simulations and experiments. The research papers on multi-type heat pump system increased significantly. The studies on heat pipe have been examined experimently for change of working characteristics and strut lure. Research on the phase change has been carried out steadily and operation strategies of encapsulated ice storage tank are reported experimentally in several papers. (4) A review of recent studies on refrigeration/air conditioning system have focused on the system performance and efficiency for new alternative refrigerants. Evaporation and condensation heat transfer characteristics are investigated for tube shapes and new alternative refrigerants. Studies on components of refrigeration/air conditioning system are carried to examine efficiency for various compressors and performance of new expansion devices. In addition to thermophysical properties of refrigerant mixtures, studies on new refrigerants are also carried out, however research works on two-phase flow seemed to be insufficient. (5) A review of the recent studies on absorption cooling system indicates that heat and mass transfer phenomena have been investigated to improve absorber performance. Various experimental data have been presented and several simulation models have been proposed. A review of the recent studies on duct and ventilation shows that ventilation indices have been proposed to quantify the ventilation performance in buildings and tunnels. Main efforts have been focused on the applications of ventilation effectiveness in practice, either numerically using computational fluid dynamics or experimentally using tracer gas techniques. (6) Based on a review of recent studies on indoor thermal environment and building service systems, research issues have mainly focused on many innovative ideas such as underfloor air-conditioning system, personal environmental modules, radiant floor cooling and etc. Also, the new approaches for minimizing energy consumption as well as improving indoor environmental conditions through predictive control of HVAC systems, various activities of building energy management and cost-benefit analysis for economic evaluation were highlighted.

• Research in Community and Public Health Nursing
• /
• v.9 no.2
• /
• pp.502-517
• /
• 1998

This research intends to survey family environment, health behavior and health status of the students in urban-rural elementary schools and analyze those factors comparatively, and use the result as basic material for school health teacher to teach health education in connection with family and regional areas. It also intends to improve a pupil's self-abilitiy in health care. The subjects involve 2,774 students of urban elementary schools and 583 student in rural ones, who were selected by means of a multi -stage probability sampling. Using the questionnaire and school documents, we collected data on family environment, health behavior and health status for 19 days. Feb. 2nd 1998 through Feb. 20th 1998. The R -form of Family Environment Scale (Moos, 1974) was used in the analysis of family environment(Cronbach's Alpha =0.80). Questionnaires of Health Behavior in School-aged children used by the WHO in Europe(Aaro et al., 1986) and the ones developed by the Health Promotion Committee of the Western Pacific(WHO, 1995)(adapted by long Young-suk and Moon Young-hee(1996)) were used in the analysis of health behavior, as well documents on absences due to sickness, school health room-visits, levels of physical strength, height, weight and degree of obesity were used to determine health status. In next step, We used them with an $X^2$-test, t-test, Odds Ratio, and a 95% Confidence Interval. 1. In two dimensions of three, family-relationship (t=3.41, p=0.001) and system -maintenances(t= 2.41, p=0.0l6) the mean score of urban children were significantly higher than those of rural ones. In the personal development dimension however, there was little significant difference. Assorting family environment into 10 sub-fields and analyzing them, we recognized that urban children were superior to rural children in the sub-fields of expressiveness (t =3.47, p=0.001), conflict (t=0.48, p=0.001), active-recreational orientation (t = 1.97, p=0.049) and organization (t=4.33, p=0.000). 2. Referring to the Odds Ratios of urban-rural children's health behaviors, urban children set up more desirable behavior than rural children wear ing safety belts (Odds Ratio =0.32, p=0.000), washing hands after meals(Odds Ratio = 0.43, p= 0.000), washing hands after excreting (Odds Ratio = 0.39, p=O.OOO), washing hands after coming - home ( Odds Ratio = 0.75, p = 0.003), brushing teeth before sleeping(Odds Ratio =0.45, p=0.000), brushing teeth more than once a day (Odds Ratio =0.73, p=0.0l2), drinking boiled water (Odds Ratio = 0.49, p=0.000), collecting garbage at home(Odds Ratio=0.31, p=0.000) and in the school(Odds Ratio =0. 67, p=0.000). All these led to significant differences. As to taking milk(Odds Ratio = 1.50, p=0.000), taking care of eyesight(Odds Ratio=1.41, p=0.001) and getting physical exercise in(Odds Ratio = 1.33, p=0.0l9) and outside the school(Odds Ratio = 1.32, p=0.005), rural children had more desirable behavior which also revealed a significant difference. There was little significant difference in smoking, but the smoking rate of rural children(5.5%) was larger than that of urban children(3.9%). 3. Health status was analyzed in terms of absences, school health room-visits, levels of physical strength, and the degree of obesity, height and weight. Considering Odds Ratios of the health status of urban-rural children, the health status of rural children was significantly better than that of the urban ones in the level of physical strength(t=1.51, p=0.000) and the degree of obesity(t=1.84, p=0.000). The mean height of urban children ($150.4{\pm}7.5cm$) is taller than that of their counterparts($149.5{\pm}7.9$), which revealed a significant difference (t =2.47, p=0.0l4). The mean weight of urban children($42.9{\pm}8.6kg$) is larger than that of their counterparts($41.8{\pm}9.0kg$), which was also a significant difference(t=2.81, p=0.005). Considering the results above, we can recognize that there are significant differences in family environment, health behavior, and health status in urban-rural children. These results also suggestion ideas for health education. What we would suggest for the health program of elementary schools is that school health teachers should play an active role in promoting the need and importance of health education, develop the appropriate programs which correspond to the regional characteristics, and incorporate them into schools to improve children's ability to manage their own health management.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
• /
• v.31 no.5
• /
• pp.847-885
• /
• 2002

The purpose of this study was to develop a web-based internet program for nutritional assessment and diet Prescription by renal diseases. Renal diseases were classified by nephrotic syndrome, renal failure, hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis. The system consisted of five parts according to their functions and contents. The first part is to assess the general health status such as body weight, obesity index, basal metabolic rate and total energy requirement by the input of age, sex, height, weight and degree of activity. The second part was designed to investigate dietary history of patient, that is, to find out his inappropriate dietary habit and give him some suggestions for appropriate dietary behavior by investigating his dietary history. This part also offers the diet and nutrition management by personal status with renal disease, and the information for food selection, snacks, convenience foods, dine-out, behavioral modification, cooking methods, food exchange lists and terms. The third part is evaluating their energy and nutrients intake by comparing with recommended dietary allowance for Koreans or standardized data for patient with renal disease. In this part, it is also analyzing energy and nutrients of food consumed by food group and meals, and evaluating the status of nutrient intake. The fort]1 one, a major part of the system, is implementing the diet and menu planning by using food exchange lists. This Part Provides the patient with menus lists and I day menu suitable to his weight, activity and the status of renal disease. The fifth part is providing information on energy and nutrients of foods and drinks, and top 20 foods classified by nutrients. These results are finally displayed as tabular forms and graphical forms on the computer screen.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
• /
• v.66 no.1
• /
• pp.37-44
• /
• 1984

The study was carried out to investigate the relationship of certain socio-economic factors to the private owner's knowledge of forestry practices. The dependent variable was knowledge level in forestry, and the six independent variables were owner's age, educational level, forestland area, socio-economic status, communication and socio-psychological factors. For the study the data were collected by interviewing 258 private forest owners, and analized primarily by multiple correlation statistical technique. The sampled private owners were grouped into two categories: the common owners and model owners. 1) The average score of forestry knowledge of common owners was lower than that of model owners, and the difference was about 15 scores. The scores of other independent variables such as age, educational level, forestland area, socio-economic status, communication and socio-psychological factors of common owners were also significantly lower than those of model owners. 2) The common owner's knowledge of forestry practice were positively correlated with educational level, socio-psychological and communication variables. On the other hand, the model owner's were negatively correlated with the educational level, but positively with the socio-economic status and the socio-psychological variables. 3) The multiple correlation coefficient between the common owner's knowledge scores and six independent variables was 0.5667. About 31.46 percent of the variance of this knowledge could be explained by the communication variable, and other 1.42 percent by the socio-psychological factor. In the case of model owners, the multiple correlation was 0.5332, and about 16.62 percent of the variance of the knowledge could be explained by the communication variable, and ls.y percent by the socio-psychological factor. 4) The opportunity of communication contact through the mass media, personal communication and owner's social participation should be augmented for the effective forestry extension works, because it is one of the results of the study that the private forest owner's knowledge in forestry was greatly affected by communication variable.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
• /
• v.17 no.4
• /
• pp.165-186
• /
• 2007

With the advent of a wide variety of Internet shopping malls, consumers can choose a best appealing shopping mall from among the Bricks-and-Clicks and Pure-Player malls. Pure-Players launched their operation grandiosely with the early stage of Internet use in 1995. However, after the burst of Dot-com company bubbles in 1997, Pure-Players introduce various types of business models to meet potential needs of consumers. While Pure-Players suffer skeptical views from market analysts as well as consumers, traditional offline companies learned important lessons from Dot-com companies collapse phenomena, and expanded their business channels into online in the name of Bricks-and-Clicks. Nowadays, Bricks-and-Clicks successfully establish in the market as one of reliable business partners among consumers. Therefore, it is no surprise that recent competitions between Bricks-and Clicks and Pure-Players become fiercer than ever to attract potential customers to their websites. In this situation, consumers can choose a shopping mall to their best satisfaction. Consumers can enjoy both offline and online options for shopping because Bricks-and Clicks provide both offline and online channels to consumers, which is compared with Pure-Players offering only online channel. Offline channel is unique in providing consumers with chances to touch and feel target products and services. Meanwhile, online channel is considered very viable and convenient shopping options for consumers. In this respect, it is easily assumed that consumers will show different online shopping behavior when they have to choose either Bricks-and-Clicks mall or Pure-Player mall for the sake of shopping. Remaining research issue in this case is how much consumers' schema would influence online shopping behavior between Bricks-and-Clicks and Pure-Players. Basically, schema is a framework for synthetic information recognition that individual consumers have and is very characteristic in that it focuses not on fragmentary facts but on the combination of various causes affecting results. Consumers' schema is closely represented by trust, structural assurance, and perceived relative advantage towards a specific type of shopping mall. In literature, there exist a lot of studies comparing Bricks-and-Clicks and Pure-Players. However, there is no study to pursue the analysis of consumer behaviors comparing Bricks-and Clicks and Pure-Players from the schema perspective. Therefore, this study aims to investigate this research gap. Empirical analysis is adopted by garnering valid questionnaires from 514 Internet shopping mall users. 237 were mainly using Bricks-and-Clicks for shopping, while 277 were found to visit Pure-Players for shopping. PLS was applied to analyze the survey data to verify the proposed research hypotheses. Findings from the empirical test results are as follows. First, consumers perceive more trust and relative advantage in Pure-Players, comparing with Bricks-and-Clicks. This result is against widely-accepted perception that Bricks-and-Clicks would be perceived by consumers as more trustworthy and relatively advantageous because they have offline reputation and stores. Therefore, it becomes more obvious that Internet is becoming daily necessaries, and consumers increasingly feel very comfortable in using the Internet for their own personal purposes. Second, consumers have firm faith in transaction safety, regardless Bricks-and-Clicks and Pure-Players. This seems due to the fact that most of shopping malls showing dubious transaction safety have no place in the market. In a nutshell, empirical results tell us that Pure-Players will grow very much in the future, to the extent that consumers perceive no difference in comparison with Bricks-and-Clicks. Besides, consumers' schema accumulated through trust and perceived relative advantage plays crucial role in determining consumer behavior.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
• /
• v.32 no.2
• /
• pp.177-182
• /
• 1999

Objectives: To reexamine the association between air pollution and daily mortality in Seoul, Korea using a method of meta-analysis with the data filed for 1991 through 1995. Methods: A separate Poisson regression analysis on each district within the metropolitan area of Seoul was conducted to regress daily death counts on levels of each ambient air pollutant, such as total suspended particulates (TSP), sulfur dioxide $(SO_2)$, and ozone $(O_3)$, controlling for variability in the weather condition. We calculated a weighted mean as a meta-analysis summary of the estimates and its standard error. Results: We found that the p value from each pollutant model to test the homogeneity assumption was small (p<0.01) because of the large disparity among district-specific estimates. Therefore, all results reported here were estimated from the random effect model. Using the weighted mean that we calculated, the mortality at a $100{\mu}g/m^3$ increment in a 3-day moving average of TSP levels was 1.034 (95% Cl 1.009-1.059). The mortality was estimated to increase 6% (95% Cl 3-10%) and 3% (95% Cl 0-6%) with each 50 ppb increase for 9-day moving average of SO2 and 1-hr maximum O3, respectively. Conclusions: Like most of air pollution epidemiologic studies, this meta-analysis cannot avoid fleeing from measurement misclassification since no personal measurement was taken. However, we can expect that a measurement bias be reduced in a district-specific estimate since a monitoring station is hefter representative cf air quality of the matched district. The similar results to those from the previous studios indicated existence of health effect of air pollution at current levels in many industrialized countries, including Korea.