• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.115-132
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• 2011

Prior research in medical service field have mainly focused on service quality, satisfaction, and choice attributes of hospital. However, a little research has been done on "Which service quality attributes are more preferred by customer motivation(customer regulatory focus)". This study examines how regulatory focus affects the structural impact relationships of service quality and emotion(quiescence) on perceived value in medical service context. Especially, this research draws the moderating effects of regulatory focus between medical service quality, emotion, and perceived value. The Results were summarized as follows: The relative impacts of medical service quality on customer emotion are different depending upon the regulatory focus. Hospital reputation is shown to be more important factors in prevention-oriented customer, while physical environment is the case in promotion-oriented customer. The relative impacts of medical service quality and emotion on perceived value are different depending upon the regulatory focus. Hospital reputation, convenience, and accessibility are shown to be more important factors in promotion-oriented customer, while physical environment is more important in prevention-oriented customer. Also, emotion has a positive influence on perceived value in prevention-oriented customer, whereas the effect of emotion is not significant in promotion-oriented customer.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.101-116
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• 2016

In this paper, we suggested a model that reflects the role played by the consumer's regulatory focus (promotion focus and prevention focus) as determinant factors of trust in the Web site. Also, we considered the moderating effects of consumers' purchasing experience toward online shopping. We conducted a two-month survey of 230 individuals using online shopping sites for hypotheses testing. The study results are summarized as follows. Firstly, promotion focused consumers showed higher trust to a web site compared to prevention focused consumers. Secondly, the moderating effect of purchasing experience between regulatory focus and consumer trust to a web site is statistically significant. The effect of a prevention focused consumers on consumer trust to a web site is stronger when purchasing experience toward online shopping is high compared to low. Based on these findings, this study presents practical and academic implications of the research.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.14 no.10
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• pp.117-126
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• 2016

Purpose - Color is perceived to have an effect on humans' cognition and behavior because of its association with specific concepts. Since there are few studies linking color and price presentation, we investigated a constrained condition of consumers' regulatory focus and involvement. Research design, data, and methodology - We performed a 2 (color: red vs. black) × 2 (regulatory focus: prevention vs. promotion) × 2 (involvement: high vs. low) test of our hypothesis. The target product was a portable data storage device (USB) and data from 165 respondents were analyzed. Each condition had two stages. In the first, product information and price were presented. After reviewing the product information, respondents evaluated price attractiveness. In the second stage, respondents filled out regulatory focus and involvement questionnaires. The main variables were color, regulatory focus, and involvement. Therefore, we ran a three-way ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) to test our hypothesis. Results - When the price was red (vs. black), consumers perceived the red price as more attractive than the black price. However, this effect varied by situation. Specifically, in the low involvement condition among prevention-focused consumers, when the price was in red, price attractiveness was higher than when the price was in black. However, for promotion-focused consumers, there was no difference in the price color effect. In the high involvement condition, promotion-focused consumers showed stronger price attractiveness for the red price than the black price. However, the effect of price color diminished for prevention-focused consumers. That is, prevention-focused consumers did not reveal a different price perception between red versus black in the high involvement condition. Conclusions - This research contributes by academically linking the effects of color to price attractiveness, and focusing on the interaction of regulatory focus and involvement. When involvement is low, the effect of red disappeared for promotion-focused consumers, whereas the same happened for prevention-focused consumers under the condition of high involvement.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.93-101
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• 2016

Purpose - Due to the heavy reliance on the human dependence, several factors such as attitude, behavior, emotional status and the quality of the service by the employees have been a decisive effect on the existence of a business in service industry. This study made use of the cases from the beauty salons in Korea, and tried to find out the meaningful results with following purposes. The purpose of this study is to find out the effects of psychological ownership with focusing on the employees in service industry. Therefore, this study is based on the literature reviews in the fields of psychological ownership, regulatory focus, and customer satisfaction. In particular, this study focuses on the regulatory focus with two parts. The two parts are composed of the promotion focus and prevention focus. Also, the relationship between the regulatory focus on employee and customer satisfaction was identified through empirical study. Mediating effects of regulatory focus were also studied, that is, the regulatory focus was on the relationship between psychological ownership and customer satisfaction. In conclusion, practical and intellectual implications were discussed for the growth and development in service industry. Research design, data & methodology - The survey for this study was conducted from November 15th to December 15th in 2015. The same amount of survey was given to both, the service providers and customers. For both of them, such as the service providers and customers, 260 questionnaires were distributed to them in total. After excluding the missing and unreliable responses for the exact analysis and process, 250 responses were collected and used in the research analysis. This study conducted a survey questionnaires, and the confirmatory analysis was used for the reliability and validity in this study. SPSS & AMOS programs were used for the analysis. Results - The first variable that was looked at from this study is the psychological ownership. The psychological ownership had positive effects on the performance both in improving focus and prevention focus. It indicates that this study supports the results from the previous studies. Second, the effects on the performance in improving focus and prevention focus for customer satisfaction were studied. As a result, the performance in improving focus had positive effect on customer satisfaction, but prevention focus did not have any positive effect. Third, this study looked at the mediating effect of regulatory focus on the relationship between the psychological ownership and the customer satisfaction, and only partly, they had positive effects on customer satisfaction. Conclusions - The results of this study showed that the psychological ownership has positive effects on regulatory focus both in performance improving focus and prevention focus. However, the mediating effects had partial positive effects on customer satisfaction and these results indicate that the service enterprises should focus on the employees' psychological ownership in order to maximize the customers' satisfaction.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.39-47
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• 2014

Purpose - The ultimate goal of a franchise system comes from its win-win strategy. Agency theory uses goal incongruity to examine complex contracting problems between buyers and suppliers. Goal incongruity within a contractual relationship can be defined as the agent's desire not to cooperate. It is the degree to which the contractual terms do not satisfy the agent's goals. The greater the goal incongruity between the agent and the contract, the more likely it is that the agent will meet the terms of the contract. Thus, goal incongruity between buyers and suppliers has close relationships with both behavioral and financial performance. This study tries to examine these relationships in the franchise context using a model including related variables, such as regulatory foci, financial performance, and opportunism, to explain the reasons that not all franchisees perform their best. In particular, the study examines the effects of goal incongruity on regulatory focus, and the effects of regulatory focus on performance and opportunism. In short, the objective is to determine goal incongruity's effect on regulatory foci, and the effect of regulatory focus on performance and opportunism. Research design, data, and methodology - This study used data collected from the franchisee managers of 104 franchisors in South Korea. The franchisors include more than 10 franchisees, the majority of whom have been in business for more than five years. The study also surveyed 104 franchisees, matched with their franchisors for the sake of a dyadic approach. The study used regression analysis to test the hypotheses. Results - H1 and H2 predicted that goal incongruity would decrease promotion focus and increase prevention focus. Supporting H1, the result indicates goal incongruity had a positive effect on promotion focus. However, H2 was not supported. Goal incongruity had no significant effect on prevention focus (β = -.375, t = -4.331 and β = -.145, t = -1.950, respectively). H3 and H4 predicted that promotion focus would increase financial performance and decrease opportunism. Supporting these hypotheses, the results indicate that promotion focus had a positive effect on financial performance and a negative effect on opportunism (β = .771, t = 7.899 and β = -.765, t = -6.778, respectively). H5 and H6 predicted that prevention focus would decrease financial performance and increase opportunism. However, the results do not support these hypotheses. The results indicate that prevention focus had no effects on opportunism or financial performance (β = -.130, t = -1.070 and β = .090, t = .641, respectively). Overall, the evidence generally supported the hypotheses. Conclusion - Goal incongruity between a franchisor and a franchisee increases the franchisee's financial performance and opportunism, and the relationship is mediated by promotion focus. Interestingly, however, prevention focus has no mediating effect between goal incongruity and performance. Even though no significant relation exists between goal incongruity and prevention focus, the results have two implications. First, decreasing goal incongruity can improve financial performance and suppress franchisee opportunism. Second, the relationship between goal incongruity and performance affects promotion-focused franchisees.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.89-97
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• 2010

This study researches the effects of common features on a no-choice option with respect to regulatory focus theory. The primary interest is in three factors and their interrelationship: common features, no-choice option, and regulatory focus. Prior studies have compiled vast body of research in these areas. First, the "common features effect" has been observed bymany noted marketing researchers. Tversky (1972) proposed the seminal theory, the EBA model: elimination by aspect. According to this theory, consumers are prone to focus only on unique features during comparison processing, thereby dismissing any common features as redundant information. Recently, however, more provocative ideas have attacked the EBA model by asserting that common features really do affect consumer judgment. Chernev (1997) first reported that adding common features mitigates the choice gap because of the increasing perception of similarity among alternatives. Later, however, Chernev (2001) published a critically developed study against his prior perspective with the proposition that common features may be a cognitive load to consumers, and thus consumers are possible that they are prone to prefer the heuristic processing to the systematic processing. This tends to bring one question to the forefront: Do "common features" affect consumer choice? If so, what are the concrete effects? This study tries to answer the question with respect to the "no-choice" option and regulatory focus. Second, some researchers hold that the no-choice option is another best alternative of consumers, who are likely to avoid having to choose in the context of knotty trade-off settings or mental conflicts. Hope for the future also may increase the no-choice option in the context of optimism or the expectancy of a more satisfactory alternative appearing later. Other issues reported in this domain are time pressure, consumer confidence, and alternative numbers (Dhar and Nowlis 1999; Lin and Wu 2005; Zakay and Tsal 1993). This study casts the no-choice option in yet another perspective: the interactive effects between common features and regulatory focus. Third, "regulatory focus theory" is a very popular theme in recent marketing research. It suggests that consumers have two focal goals facing each other: promotion vs. prevention. A promotion focus deals with the concepts of hope, inspiration, achievement, or gain, whereas prevention focus involves duty, responsibility, safety, or loss-aversion. Thus, while consumers with a promotion focus tend to take risks for gain, the same does not hold true for a prevention focus. Regulatory focus theory predicts consumers' emotions, creativity, attitudes, memory, performance, and judgment, as documented in a vast field of marketing and psychology articles. The perspective of the current study in exploring consumer choice and common features is a somewhat creative viewpoint in the area of regulatory focus. These reviews inspire this study of the interaction possibility between regulatory focus and common features with a no-choice option. Specifically, adding common features rather than omitting them may increase the no-choice option ratio in the choice setting only to prevention-focused consumers, but vice versa to promotion-focused consumers. The reasoning is that when prevention-focused consumers come in contact with common features, they may perceive higher similarity among the alternatives. This conflict among similar options would increase the no-choice ratio. Promotion-focused consumers, however, are possible that they perceive common features as a cue of confirmation bias. And thus their confirmation processing would make their prior preference more robust, then the no-choice ratio may shrink. This logic is verified in two experiments. The first is a $2{\times}2$ between-subject design (whether common features or not X regulatory focus) using a digital cameras as the relevant stimulus-a product very familiar to young subjects. Specifically, the regulatory focus variable is median split through a measure of eleven items. Common features included zoom, weight, memory, and battery, whereas the other two attributes (pixel and price) were unique features. Results supported our hypothesis that adding common features enhanced the no-choice ratio only to prevention-focus consumers, not to those with a promotion focus. These results confirm our hypothesis - the interactive effects between a regulatory focus and the common features. Prior research had suggested that including common features had a effect on consumer choice, but this study shows that common features affect choice by consumer segmentation. The second experiment was used to replicate the results of the first experiment. This experimental study is equal to the prior except only two - priming manipulation and another stimulus. For the promotion focus condition, subjects had to write an essay using words such as profit, inspiration, pleasure, achievement, development, hedonic, change, pursuit, etc. For prevention, however, they had to use the words persistence, safety, protection, aversion, loss, responsibility, stability etc. The room for rent had common features (sunshine, facility, ventilation) and unique features (distance time and building state). These attributes implied various levels and valence for replication of the prior experiment. Our hypothesis was supported repeatedly in the results, and the interaction effects were significant between regulatory focus and common features. Thus, these studies showed the dual effects of common features on consumer choice for a no-choice option. Adding common features may enhance or mitigate no-choice, contradictory as it may sound. Under a prevention focus, adding common features is likely to enhance the no-choice ratio because of increasing mental conflict; under the promotion focus, it is prone to shrink the ratio perhaps because of a "confirmation bias." The research has practical and theoretical implications for marketers, who may need to consider common features carefully in a practical display context according to consumer segmentation (i.e., promotion vs. prevention focus.) Theoretically, the results suggest some meaningful moderator variable between common features and no-choice in that the effect on no-choice option is partly dependent on a regulatory focus. This variable corresponds not only to a chronic perspective but also a situational perspective in our hypothesis domain. Finally, in light of some shortcomings in the research, such as overlooked attribute importance, low ratio of no-choice, or the external validity issue, we hope it influences future studies to explore the little-known world of the "no-choice option."

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.69-81
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• 2014

Financial products entail either gains or losses, and customers' psychological reaction to these gains and losses affect the selection of the financial products. This study explains the financial customers' behavior by introducing consumers' psychological variables such as regulatory focus and construal levels. According to the regulatory focus theory, there are two distinct motivational orientations called promotion focus and prevention focus. And, construal level theory proposes that people use more abstract and higher levels of construal to represent objects that are more distant on psychological distance. We have incorporated these two psychological variables into financial consumer behaviors. In the experiment 1, the results have showed that promotion focused customers prefer fund products to deposit products, whereas prevention focused customers have showed the opposite result. In the experiment 2, both regulatory focus and construal level were considered. Specifically, under the high level message, promotion focused customers have showed higher preference to fund products than the prevention focused customers, and no significant difference for the deposit products. On the contrary, given the low level message, prevention focused customers have showed higher preference to both fund and deposit products than the promotion focused customers. Therefore, it comes to the conclusion that it will be efficient for the financial companies to use high level messages for the promotion focused customers and low level messages for the prevention focused customers. Implications and limitations are discussed to establish more effective marketing strategies based on the results of this study.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.103-121
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• 2013

Since American Airlines's mileage program emerged in market, loyalty programs have gained popularity. Many companies have generated many kinds of reward cards in order to induce precious consumers. As a result, reward cards are very important in consumer goods market and become diversified. In spite of its importance, little is known about how these cards influence consumer's perception. The prior research has not focused on reward card types and psychological variables. Accordingly this research intends to investigate psychological variables such as transaction coupling and sunk cost perception. According to the theory of regulatory focus, promotion focus consumers would point to gain-nongain frame work, but prevention focus consumers would point to loss-nonloss frame work. The paper proved the effect of reward card types and regulatory focus on transaction coupling and sunk cost perception. Based on the results from 2(type of card : visible vs invisible) ${\times}$ 2(regulatory focus: promotion vs prevention) between-subjects factorial design experiments, we found that consumer's transaction coupling and sunk cost perception of visible reward card are better recognized than invisible reward card. In addition, the results show that there is a significant interaction effect between the type of reward card and regulatory focus. Specifically promotion focused consumers tend to reveal better perception than prevention focused consumers in use of invisible cards. However, prevention focused consumers tend to show better perception than promotion focused consumers in use of visible cards. These findings will contribute to significant academic development and practically useful help to marketing managers.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.8
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• pp.2034-2041
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• 2019

Public acceptance has become the most critical question for sustainable development of nuclear energy in recent decades. Many researches concentrated on risk and benefit perception, which were deemed as the most influential factors of Public Acceptance of Nuclear Energy (PANE). But few researches focused on psychological factors including regulatory focus. Therefore, this paper aimed to explore the moderating effect of regulatory focus on PANE based on Regulatory Focus Theory in order to find ways to increase/decrease PANE. An Internet-based survey had been carried out in China nationwide. The results indicated that trust in government was positively related to PANE and this relationship was mediated by risk and benefit perception. In addition, the strength of the associations between risk and benefit perception and PANE were moderated by regulatory focus, consisting of prevention focus and promotion focus. Prevention focus strengthened the negative relationship between risk perception and PANE, while promotion focus weakened. Moreover, promotion focus weakened the positive relationship between benefit perception and PANE, but no significant moderating effect of prevention focus was founded on the relationship between benefit perception and PANE. Some policy implications were also proposed on the basis of above-mentioned findings.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.707-718
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• 2022

The metaverse is emerging as the next digital environment for people not only to interact and collaborate with others, but also to have virtual consumption experiences. In this study, virtual fashion items for the consumer's digital self are deemed significant products with consumption value. Drawing from the regulatory focus theory, this study examines how consumers' promotion and prevention focus influence value perception and buying behaviors of virtual fashion items in the metaverse context. The data were collected through an online survey. A total of 546 consumers in their twenties who are aware of the metaverse responded to a self-administered questionnaire. The results showed that promotion focus influenced all the perceived consumption values of virtual fashion items such as the economic, visual authority, hedonic, and social value, whereas prevention focus influenced only the visual authority value. Visual authority value negatively affected both purchase intention and willingness to pay premium price, while others had a positive effect. The findings provide theoretical evidence that consumers' regulatory focus is critical in buying virtual fashion items and suggest that marketers devise effective strategies to stimulate consumers' regulatory focus and to emphasize the economic, hedonic, and social value of the items in the metaverse context.