• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.564-573
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• 2019

Recently, purchasing expensive branded apparel became prevalent among adolescents as they consume conspicuously. People in their adolescence strongly tend to follow peers and are very likely to pay attention to how they wear look to others. Already a good deal of prior research about young people's conspicuous consumption have focused on variables related to these behaviors. The purpose of this study is to examine demographic characteristics of adolescents who show a conspicuous consumption and factors affecting this consumption which is related to peer relations. And we will examine how negative emotions arisen out of relations influence teenagers' conspicuous consumption of branded apparels ultimately. Being out of favor from peers has an effect on anxiety which is negative emotion in association with peer relations. According to the survey, adolescents did conspicuous consumption following others or following trends to get rid of anxiety. Also, if appears to be acting on clothing consumption as a means not to be marginalized. All these findings are expected to be useful information to adolescents to have a better habit of consumption life, and also anticipated to be valuable information for consumer behavior education. The cause of youth's show-off behavior, which is still incomplete in identity formation and immature in choice and judgement, will have to be analyzed and countermeasures taken against it.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.33-50
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• 2019

This study investigates the decision-making processes of Iranian women in their twenties who purchased Hallyu beauty and fashion products. We conducted ten in-depth interviews of Hallyu enthusiasts who previously purchased Hallyu products. Interviewees were recruited using a snowball sampling technique based on nonprobability sampling. Interviews were conducted in the 1:1 in-depth interview format for one hour of each interview from April 11, 2017, to May 14, 2017, using semi-structured questionnaires, and recorded with consent. Our analysis of the characteristics of consumption behaviors of the women used seven steps of the purchase decision-making process. This study used interviews to analyze the following questions. Research Question 1. What is the decision process for Iranian women's consumer products purchase? Research Question 2. What are the characteristics and meaning of each stage of Iranian women's consumer decision-making process? Data collection in this study was limited to participants in their twenties; however, this research will be helpful for future Hallyu and Iranian consumer analysis. A follow-up study should examine the purchasing decisions of women in additional age groups in order to generalize the results.

• Nutrition Research and Practice
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.103-121
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• 2023

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has affected the entire world population in many ways. This study aimed to analyze the patterns of changes in eating, food purchasing and preparation, physical activity, and subjective health after COVID-19 outbreak by various sociodemographic factors and to understand the factors associated with changes in subjective health. SUBJECTS/METHODS: A cross-sectional survey using a representative sample from Seoul was used for the analysis. The data collection was conducted from September to October 2020. A total of 3,833 citizens aged more than 18 years old participated in the Seoul Food Survey. Descriptive statistics and generalized ordinal logistic regression models were used to understand the changes in health behaviors, health indicators, and subjective general health by various socioeconomic status. RESULTS: It was shown that the changes in household income, food expenditure, food consumption and physical activities differed significantly by age, education, occupation, income, weight, and food security status. Low-income and food-insecure households were affected more severely by the pandemic. Older age, household food insecurity, income reduction, increased home cooking and frequency of having instant foods, decreased physical activity and weight gain were significant factors explaining worse perceived health during the COVID-19 pandemic. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest that focusing on older populations and low-income families with food insecurity should be prioritized during infectious disease outbreaks. In addition, the role of physical activities and instant food consumption in explaining perceived health should be investigated further in this prolonged battle with the pandemic situation.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.744-755
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• 2022

This study sought to verify the shopping values that tourists pursue by purchasing at travel destinations based on tourists' motivation and identify the effects of these values on the types of fashion items preferred by tourists. Furthermore, this study verified the tourist shopping behavior of three Asian countries-Korea, China, and Japan-from a cross-cultural perspective. To obtain a sample that represents tourist shoppers in each country, a survey was conducted on adult men and women in their 20s to 60s, and 986 subjects were collected: 300 Koreans, 385 Chinese, and 301 Japanese. Factor analysis, structural equation modeling, and multigroup SEM were performed on the collected data using SPSS Statistics and AMOS. Based on escaping-seeking theory, tourist intentions were divided into escaping and seeking motivations, and tourist shopping values were divided into functional, emotional, and social. The shopping items were divided into materials and experiential goods to understand the difference between the types preferred by tourists according to the perceived value. In addition, differences in tourist shopping behaviors according to the three nationalities were identified. The findings illustrate that the escaping motive affects emotional and social values, whereas the seeking motive affects all three. Moreover, it was confirmed that functional and emotional values affect preference for material and experiential goods, but social value only affects preference for material goods. For the cross-cultural study, differences in tourist shopping behavior according to nationality were identified.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.151-163
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• 2023

This study aims to explore the perceptions of MZ's on eco-friendly consumption and their preferences for eco-friendly souvenirs. The top reasons for buying upcycling products include design, price, differentiation, and environmentalism, with design having the most influence on product purchase. Design is also a top consideration when buying upcycling souvenirs. Regarding environmental issues, they were most aware of the seriousness of environmental pollution and thought that recycling of fashion products was necessary. When it comes to eco-friendly fashion purchasing behaviors, the most common choice is to buy clothes that will last longer than those that are in fashion. Upcycling products are more likely to be purchased when there is a concern for the environment or an interest in eco-friendly products. In addition, those who have purchased upcycling products are more likely to be aware of and interested in eco-friendly fashion products and recycling of fashion products. Women are more likely than men to be concerned about environmental issues, and women are also more likely to be aware of upcycling souvenirs. In future research, it would be useful to study the relationship between upcycling products, environmental issues, consumer behavior, and upcycling souvenirs.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.29-47
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• 2013

Distribution channel decisions involve long-term commitments with other firms that are very difficult to change or replace. In particular, marketing channel decisions in emerging markets are much more complicated due to unfamiliar conditions and problems such as lack of market data and distribution systems. Therefore, when a company considers changing or introducing a marketing channel in an area, it is much more difficult to judge its effectiveness in an emerging market than in a developed market. In this study, we investigate the development process of a new direct marketing channel of Hongfu Fertilizer Company (hereafter Hongfu), a medium-sized Chinese fertilizer manufacturer, and propose an approach to test the feasibility of this new marketing channel in the Chinese rural market. We measure the effectiveness of Hongfu's new marketing channel from two perspectives: i) from customers' perspective through direct responses of farmers, which showed that a new channel can increase the convenience and lower the purchasing costs for the farmers, and ii) from the company's perspective, by calculating the incremental profit of the company using the expansion factor (T/Q) method, which suggested that the execution of Hongfu's strategy to expand a new marketing channel will result in an increase in profits. The results of this study contribute to the development of a methodology to test the feasibility of a new direct marketing channel in the emerging markets such as the Chinese rural market. Traditional and indirect distribution channels in emerging markets are generally not very efficient and difficult to change. Especially, in emerging markets, like the Chinese rural market, the methods of testing channel feasibility must be different from that of developed markets. Considering market situations, market experiments can be more effective then systematic market surveys in testing channel feasibility in emerging markets. This study implies that managers must learn to cope with a transition from the traditional marketing channels in emerging markets. With the development in farmers' understanding of marketing concept, the transition from traditional marketing channel is unavoidable for all firms. Farmers in China are generally very conservative, however, their buying behaviors are changing. Therefore, fertilizer companies should try to adjust in accordance with farmers' demand characteristics that the efforts to meet the economic needs of farmers with new marketing channels as well as trust building are critical in the near future.

• Korean Journal of Community Nutrition
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.318-335
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• 2024

Objectives: Despite the growing market share of online grocery shopping, there is a need to understand customer perceived value due to the ongoing advancements in information technology. This study explores the connections between attributes, consequences, and values. Additionally, it conducts a cross-country comparison of consumers' online grocery shopping behaviors to gain a deeper understanding of consumer market segments and any potential variations among them. Methods: Data was collected through an online questionnaire survey conducted from May 1 to 15, 2024, targeting 400 consumers in Seoul, Korea, and Shanghai, China, who have experience with online grocery shopping. The survey utilized the Means-End Chain theory and association pattern technique hard laddering. Data collation and analysis were conducted using the IBM SPSS Statistics 28.0 program. The LadderUX software was employed to analyze the links between attributes, consequences, and values and create the consumer purchasing process's implication matrix and hierarchical value map (HVM). Results: The study identified key attributes that influence online grocery shopping decisions, including delivery service, price, freshness, and quality. Korean consumers demonstrated a higher sensitivity to price (19.0%) and delivery service (17.0%). In contrast, Chinese consumers prioritized delivery service (15.0%) and after-sales service (14.8%). Commonly cited consequences included time saving (12.6% for Koreans, 11.3% for Chinese), whereas prevalent values encompassed convenience (36.8% for Koreans, 19.6% for Chinese) and economic value (26.6% for Koreans, 14.7% for Chinese). The HVM underscored these insights, highlighting diverse consumer preferences and country-specific nuances. Conclusions: The findings highlight the current state of online food consumption and consumers' value systems, revealing variations among countries. These findings offer empirical insights that can be used to create customized global marketing strategies that resonate with various consumer preferences and market dynamics.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.157-176
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• 2016

For a long time, mobile phone had a sole function of communication. Recently however, abrupt innovations in technology allowed extension of the sphere in mobile phone activities. Development of technology enabled realization of almost computer-like environment even on a very small device. Such advancement yielded several forms of new high-tech devices such as smartphone and tablet PC, which quickly proliferated. Simultaneously with the diffusion of the mobile devices, mobile applications for those devices also prospered and soon became deeply penetrated in consumers' daily lives. Numerous mobile applications have been released in app stores yielding trillions of cumulative downloads. However, a big majority of the applications are disregarded from consumers. Even after the applications are purchased, they do not survive long in consumers' mobile devices and are soon abandoned. Nevertheless, it is imperative for both app developers and app-store operators to understand consumer behaviors and to develop marketing strategies aiming to make sustainable business by first increasing sales of mobile applications and by also designing surviving strategy for applications. Therefore, this research analyzes consumers' mobile application usage behavior in a frame of substitution/supplementary of application categories and several explanatory variables. Considering that consumers of mobile devices use multiple apps simultaneously, this research adopts multivariate probit models to explain mobile application usage behavior and to derive correlation between categories of applications for observing substitution/supplementary of application use. The research adopts several explanatory variables including sociodemographic data, user experiences of purchased applications that reflect future purchasing behavior of paid applications as well as consumer attitudes toward marketing efforts, variables representing consumer attitudes toward rating of the app and those representing consumer attitudes toward app-store promotion efforts (i.e., top developer badge and editor's choice badge). Results of this study can be explained in hedonic and utilitarian framework. Consumers who use hedonic applications, such as those of game and entertainment-related, are of young age with low education level. However, consumers who are old and have received higher education level prefer utilitarian application category such as life, information etc. There are disputable arguments over whether the users of SNS are hedonic or utilitarian. In our results, consumers who are younger and those with higher education level prefer using SNS category applications, which is in a middle of utilitarian and hedonic results. Also, applications that are directly related to tangible assets, such as banking, stock and mobile shopping, are only negatively related to experience of purchasing of paid app, meaning that consumers who put weights on tangible assets do not prefer buying paid application. Regarding categories, most correlations among categories are significantly positive. This is because someone who spend more time on mobile devices tends to use more applications. Game and entertainment category shows significant and positive correlation; however, there exists significantly negative correlation between game and information, as well as game and e-commerce categories of applications. Meanwhile, categories of game and SNS as well as game and finance have shown no significant correlations. This result clearly shows that mobile application usage behavior is quite clearly distinguishable - that the purpose of using mobile devices are polarized into utilitarian and hedonic purpose. This research proves several arguments that can only be explained by second-hand real data, not by survey data, and offers behavioral explanations of mobile application usage in consumers' perspectives. This research also shows substitution/supplementary patterns of consumer application usage, which then explain consumers' mobile application usage behaviors. However, this research has limitations in some points. Classification of categories itself is disputable, for classification is diverged among several studies. Therefore, there is a possibility of change in results depending on the classification. Lastly, although the data are collected in an individual application level, we reduce its observation into an individual level. Further research will be done to resolve these limitations.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.105-130
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• 2008

Consumers of e-learning market differ from those of other markets in that they are replaced in a specific time scale. For example, e-learning contents aimed at highschool senior students cannot be consumed by a specific consumer over the designated period of time. Hence e-learning service providers need to attract new groups of students every year. Due to lack of information on products designed for continuously emerging consumers, the consumers face difficulties in making rational decisions in a short time period. Increased uncertainty of product purchase leads customers to herding behaviors to obtain information of the product from others and imitate them. Taking into consideration of these features of e-learning market, this study will focus on the online herding behavior in purchasing e-learning contents. There is no definite concept for e-learning. However, it is being discussed in a wide range of perspectives from educational engineering to management to e-business etc. Based upon the existing studies, we identify two main view-points regarding e-learning. The first defines e-learning as a concept that includes existing terminologies, such as CBT (Computer Based Training), WBT (Web Based Training), and IBT (Internet Based Training). In this view, e-learning utilizes IT in order to support professors and a part of or entire education systems. In the second perspective, e-learning is defined as the usage of Internet technology to deliver diverse intelligence and achievement enhancing solutions. In other words, only the educations that are done through the Internet and network can be classified as e-learning. We take the second definition of e-learning for our working definition. The main goal of this study is to investigate what factors affect consumer intention to purchase e-learning contents and to identify the differential impact of the factors between consumers with purchase experience and those without the experience. To accomplish the goal of this study, it focuses on herding behavior and perceived usefulness as antecedents to behavioral intention. The proposed research model in the study extends the Technology Acceptance Model by adding herding behavior and usability to take into account the unique characteristics of e-learning content market and e-learning systems use, respectively. The current study also includes consumer experience with e-learning content purchase because the previous experience is believed to affect purchasing intention when consumers buy experience goods or services. Previous studies on e-learning did not consider the characteristics of e-learning contents market and the differential impact of consumer experience on the relationship between the antecedents and behavioral intention, which is the target of this study. This study employs a survey method to empirically test the proposed research model. A survey questionnaire was developed and distributed to 629 informants. 528 responses were collected, which consist of potential customer group (n = 133) and experienced customer group (n = 395). The data were analyzed using PLS method, a structural equation modeling method. Overall, both herding behavior and perceived usefulness influence consumer intention to purchase e-learning contents. In detail, in the case of potential customer group, herding behavior has stronger effect on purchase intention than does perceived usefulness. However, in the case of shopping-experienced customer group, perceived usefulness has stronger effect than does herding behavior. In sum, the results of the analysis show that with regard to purchasing experience, perceived usefulness and herding behavior had differential effects upon the purchase of e-learning contents. As a follow-up analysis, the interaction effects of the number of purchase transaction and herding behavior/perceived usefulness on purchase intention were investigated. The results show that there are no interaction effects. This study contributes to the literature in a couple of ways. From a theoretical perspective, this study examined and showed evidence that the characteristics of e-learning market such as continuous renewal of consumers and thus high uncertainty and individual experiences are important factors to be considered when the purchase intention of e-learning content is studied. This study can be used as a basis for future studies on e-learning success. From a practical perspective, this study provides several important implications on what types of marketing strategies e-learning companies need to build. The bottom lines of these strategies include target group attraction, word-of-mouth management, enhancement of web site usability quality, etc. The limitations of this study are also discussed for future studies.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.70-79
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• 2010

There has been some research conducted that addressed immoral consumer behaviors in Korea; however, most of this research focused on purchasing counterfeits or shoplifting. High return rates of apparel and used apparel returns have been acknowledged as problem areas within the fashion industry. However, very few researchers have addressed this issue. Therefore, the goal of this research was to explore consumer's retail borrowing experience using a mixed methods approach. In study 1 Korean consumer's retail borrowing experiences was explored through focus group interviews. Findings informed study 2 an examination of apparel consumers' attitudes toward retail borrowing behavior via an online survey. Findings assist both researchers' and practitioners' understanding of retail borrowing behaviors and provide insight into retail borrowing issues in the apparel retail industry. For study 1, five focus-group interviews were conducted with seven panels of individuals that had retail borrowing experience within the past year. Thirty-five Korean consumers who lived in a metropolitan area participated in the focus group interviews. Most of consumers were in their 20's (n=21) and were women (n=24). Most participants purchased apparel items from a retail store and returned the worn items for either a full refund or exchanged the worn item for another item. Motives underlying retail borrowing behavior included social needs, job-related needs, fashion needs, and "smart shopping." Similar to existing research findings from other countries, social needs were the most frequently mentioned cause of retail borrowing in fashion stores. Consumers' moral values, attitude toward large corporations, and prior retail borrowing experience were mentioned as possible factors affecting consumers' retail borrowing behavior. For study 2, the questionnaire used to gather the data was developed based on the findings of part I and existing research. Questions concerning consumers' moral beliefs, sensation seeking tendencies, self-worth, past retail job experience, retail borrowing experience, and some demographic characteristics were included in the questionnaire. The data were collected via an online survey using an online panel provided by a commercial online research company located in Seoul, Korea. In order to obtain various consumers, a quota sample was (male: female=1:1, 20's:30's:40's=1:1:1, retail experience: no retail experience=1:3) obtained from the company. A total of 401 consumers who had shopped for apparel items during the prior 6 months participated in the online survey. The results indicated that 19.7% of the respondents reported they had experience borrowing fashion merchandise. Among these individuals, male borrowers (57%) outnumbered female borrowers. In terms of age distribution, x2 revealed that there was a statistical difference between respondents with and without retail borrowing experiences: 41.8% of the respondents with retail borrowing experience were in their 40's, while respondents without retail borrowing experience were evenly distributed between their 20's to 40's. There was also a significant difference between respondents with and without retail borrowing experience in terms of income: respondents with retail borrowing experience tended to have higher incomes than those without retail borrowing experience. T-tests were performed to compare respondents' fashion shopping behavior, moral beliefs, sensation-seeking tendencies, and attitudes toward retail borrowing behavior between participants with and without retail borrowing experience. As compared to those with no borrowing experience, respondents with experience tended to shop for fashion items more frequently and spent more on shopping for fashion items. Consumers with experience borrowing tended to have higher sensation-seeking tendencies than consumers without retail borrowing experience. A regression analysis revealed that attitudes toward fashion retail borrowing were negatively related to consumers' moral beliefs, but positively related to monthly fashion shopping frequency, sensation-seeking tendencies, and past fashion retail borrowing experience. Among these variables, past retail borrowing experience was the most significant predictor, followed by moral beliefs. This research serves as an initial attempt to address the motives that underlie retail borrowing behaviors and the factors affecting those behaviors. The findings of this study may facilitate an understanding of the consumer's retail borrowing, which will provide a basis for approaches that may help decrease retail borrowing and inappropriate returns at fashion retail stores. The findings may also provide materials for consumer education over the long term. In order to better understand fashion retail borrowing behavior, more research is needed in the future.