• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.82-94
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• 2018

As the number of SNS(Weibo) users in China is growing rapidly, Chinese fashion brands are heavily dependent on SNSs as a fashion marketing communication tool. For this reason, the characteristics of SNS accounts and their influences on SNS users' responses need to be studied. Thus, the present study aimed to investigate the influences of the characteristics of Chinese fashion brands' SNS accounts(Weibo) on the perceived usefulness of and satisfaction with the SNS acount, and brand loyalty. Data were collected via a questionnaire survey of men and women living in Beijing or Shanghai aged from 18 to 49 with experience of SNSs(Weibo). After a pilot survey of 70 subjects, the preliminary questionnaire was revised and then translated into Chinese. The questionnaire translated into Chinese was back-translated into Korean to ensure the translation was correct. The final questionnaire was administered to 600 subjects. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, reliability analysis, and structural equation model analysis were conducted for data analysis. The results of this study were as follows: Five factors were extracted for Weibo characteristics: interaction, information provision, information recency, information reliability, and information playfulness. The information reliability, information playfulness, and interaction of SNS accounts(Weibo) had significant influences on perceived usefulness. The information playfulness, information reliability, and information recency showed significant influences on satisfaction. The perceived usefulness exerted significant influences on satisfaction and brand loyalty. The satisfaction also had statistically significant influences on brand loyalty.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.87-96
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• 2017

Since SNS has gained its popularity as the means of diffusion of Hallyu, this study aims to examine the relationships between SNS use and Hallyu. In particular, this study explored how the use of SNS as a tool for obtaining information about Korean entertainment influence Chinese attitude toward Hallyu and Hallyu contents In doing so, the study conducted the case of Sina Weibo, the most leading SNS in China. The survey questionnaire was administrated to college students who use Sina Weibo in China. Two hundreds forty one surveys were included in the final analysis. The result indicated that Sina Weibo use is strong predictor influencing attitude toward Hallyu and Hallyu contents. The more students use Sina Weibo to get Korean entertainment information the more they have positive attitude toward Hallyu contents and acceptance of Hallyu in their life. In addition, the study found that attitude toward Hallyu(in terms of acceptability) depends on the level of activity in the Sina Weibo among college students in China. In other words, the passive users (e.g. lurking) are more likely to adopt Hallyu rather than active users (e.g. people who are more likely to retweet Korean entertainment information on Sina Weibo or click 'like). Based on these findings the implications, limitations and directions for future studies are discussed.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.1429-1441
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• 2016

While Facebook and Twitter get worldwide attention, these popular SNSs are not available in China. As the leading local SNS, Sina Weibo has garnered much of the attention in China. The purpose of the study was to explore why Chinese college students use Sina Weibo and if gender differences exist in the motivations for using it. The results from a survey of 360 respondents show that Chinese students used Sina Weibo mainly for information-gathering, followed by accessibility to celebrity, social connection, self-presentation and entertainment. Among them the most dominant reason for using Sina Weibo was found to be information-gathering. This finding suggests that Sina Weibo functions as a platform to search for information on social issues and interests. The study also found that these motivations were significantly different between male and female users. Interestingly, female respondents used Sina Weibo much more broadly than male counterparts, accessing it to satisfy all needs such as information gathering, accessibility to celebrity, social connection, self-presentation and entertainment. Based on these findings limitations and direction for future studies are discussed.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.367-384
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• 2016

Social networking services (SNS) have become a significant platform for Internet users to obtain knowledge and information. Users can share messages mutually via this platform. This kind of sharing enables users to exchange and gain useful information. However, in recent years, the crisis of stickiness has appeared in SNS, calling attention to the social network industry. Relevant professionals explain that the interest of users in sharing knowledge on SNS websites and applications may gradually decrease, eventually leading to users giving it because the platforms utilize simple and uninteresting methods to attract active participation from users. However, factors affecting the knowledge sharing on SNS websites and applications should be identified clearly through studies. Sina Weibo is one of the largest SNS platforms in the world, and studies on the factors affecting knowledge sharing of users could be valuable in addressing this issue. This paper establishes the theoretical analysis model of knowledge sharing in SNS sites and applications, analyzes the factors affecting knowledge sharing on these sites, and proposes the corresponding strategies to address the issues. Using questionnaire surveys on Sina Weibo users, this article will discuss the factors affecting knowledge sharing, and analyze these factors on SNS as well as improve the stickiness of users to achieve the aim of SNS platforms enabling the expansion of the range of users. The study will discuss theoretical foundations and the hypotheses that arise. The method of study will also be discussed. The study concludes with theoretical implications, practical implications, limitations, and future research opportunities. The results of this study could aid researchers in understanding the underlying reasons for social network activities as well as for SNS developers in improving SNS services.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.1064-1072
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• 2015

This study attempted to identify the motivational factors for using athletes' SNS among Chinese sports fans. The researchers posted a hyperlink of an online survey on a total of 8 Chinese Olympians' SNS(Weibo) accounts after obtaining the athlete's approval. A total of 274 surveys were gathered from the visitors of SNS. Of the 274 surveys, 33 were discarded because of missing values. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling revealed the following. Diversion, pass-time, athlete support, and technical knowledge were significantly and positively related to social media consumption while information, socialization, and fanship had no significant predictive effect on social media consumption.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.18 no.7
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• pp.92-101
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• 2017

The SNS website can take full advantage of the characteristics of users to conduct e-commerce. The e-commerce website's organizing ability will be greatly strengthened by SNS and creates greater value for consumers. This article examined the Chinese largest SNS (Weibo) users as research objects, and combined the development status of SNS in China. This article focuses on the influence to consumer's purchase intention in three aspects: number of comments, consumer involvement level, and consumer appealing method and examines how the interaction of the number of comments and consumer appealing method affects the purchase intention. An investigation was conducted on 400 users of SNS and using valid questionnaires to perform reliability analysis, validity analysis, independent sample t-test, and double factor variance analysis using SPSS21. The research results indicated that the number of comments and rational appealing method had significant effect on the purchase intention. The mediating or controlling the purchase involvement level will disturb the influence of the number of comments but will have no effect on the information appealing method.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.15 no.8
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• pp.367-374
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• 2017

The purpose of this study was to examine brand reliability, product attitude, and purchase intention attitude on a difference in a type between information source (General person / Company) in Sina Weibo. A questionnaire survey was conducted targeting 160 people. Questionnaire was conducted from April 3-7, 2017. The analysis was used 77 people for the General posting without error and 70 people for the Corporate posting. As a result of the research, general person posting is higher preference than public posting in brand reliability(General person M=2.5455/Company M=2.1306), product attitude(General person M=2.4589/Company M=1.9690), and purchase intention(General person M=2.5974/Company M=2.2750) according to type of posting information in Sina Weiboo. The outcome of this study will help to understand consumers' attitudes according to types of sources in China SNS.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.215-227
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• 2017

The development of information technology are leading to the rapid evolution of SNS (Social Networking Services) in various directions and industries. Initially, SNS have been used as the form of networking between user's groups. Currently SNS has been developed towards multiple purposes and platforms such as the promotion and the advertising of a company. There are many SNSs including QQ, Weibo, and Wechat and so on in China. However, the use of companies in terms of advertising and information sharing with the customers do not meet the trend in China. Especially, there were little researches for Chinese travel agencies how to utilize SNS for attracting new customers and making them contribute to the firm's performance. In this study, we try to investigate the impact of the firm's characteristics and the usage of SNS on the performance of Chinese travel agencies. Based on Top 100 China travel agencies in 2009, we analyzed the relationships between firm's characteristics and the usage of SNS, and firm's performances in 2013. We expect that our study can contribute to the increasing academic and practical needs on the empirical evidence of the impacts of the SNS utilizations on the firm's performance.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.197-218
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• 2019

In addition to economic growth and national income increase, China is also experiencing rapid growth in consumption of cosmetics. About 67% of the total trade volume of Chinese cosmetics is made by e-commerce and especially K-Beauty products, which are Korean cosmetics are very popular. According to previous studies, 80% of consumer goods such as cosmetics are affected by the word of mouth information, searching the product information before purchase. Mostly, consumers acquire information related to cosmetics through comments made by other consumers on SNS such as SINA Weibo and Wechat, and recently they also use information about beauty related video channels. Most of the previous online word-of-mouth researches were mainly focused on media itself such as Facebook, Twitter, and blogs. However, the informational characteristics and the expression forms are also diverse. Typical types are text, picture, and video. This study focused on these types. We analyze the unstructured data of SINA Weibo, the SNS representative platform of China, and Meipai, the video platform, and analyze the impact of K-Beauty brand sales by dividing online word-of-mouth information with quantity and direction information. We analyzed about 330,000 data from Meipai, and 110,000 data from SINA Weibo and analyzed the basic properties of cosmetics. As a result of analysis, the amount of online word-of-mouth information has a positive effect on the sales of cosmetics irrespective of the type of media. However, the online videos showed higher impacts than the pictures and texts. Therefore, it is more effective for companies to carry out advertising and promotional activities in parallel with the existing SNS as well as video related information. It is understood that it is important to generate the frequency of exposure irrespective of media type. The positiveness of the video media was significant but the positiveness of the picture and text media was not significant. Due to the nature of information types, the amount of information in video media is more than that in text-oriented media, and video-related channels are emerging all over the world. In particular, China has made a number of video platforms in recent years and has enjoyed popularity among teenagers and thirties. As a result, existing SNS users are being dispersed to video media. We also analyzed the effect of online type of information on the online cosmetics sales by dividing the product type of cosmetics into basic cosmetics and color cosmetics. As a result, basic cosmetics had a positive effect on the sales according to the number of online videos and it was affected by the negative information of the videos. In the case of basic cosmetics, effects or characteristics do not appear immediately like color cosmetics, so information such as changes after use is often transmitted over a period of time. Therefore, it is important for companies to move more quickly to issues generated from video media. Color cosmetics are largely influenced by negative oral statements and sensitive to picture and text-oriented media. Information such as picture and text has the advantage and disadvantage that the process of making it can be made easier than video. Therefore, complaints and opinions are generally expressed in SNS quickly and immediately. Finally, we analyzed how product diversity affects sales according to online word of mouth information type. As a result of the analysis, it can be confirmed that when a variety of products are introduced in a video channel, they have a positive effect on online cosmetics sales. The significance of this study in the theoretical aspect is that, as in the previous studies, online sales have basically proved that K-Beauty cosmetics are also influenced by word-of-mouth. However this study focused on media types and both media have a positive impact on sales, as in previous studies, but it has been proven that video is more informative and influencing than text, depending on media abundance. In addition, according to the existing research on information direction, it is said that the negative influence has more influence, but in the basic study, the correlation is not significant, but the effect of negation in the case of color cosmetics is large. In the case of temporal fashion products such as color cosmetics, fast oral effect is influenced. In practical terms, it is expected that it will be helpful to use advertising strategies on the sales and advertising strategy of K-Beauty cosmetics in China by distinguishing basic and color cosmetics. In addition, it can be said that it recognized the importance of a video advertising strategy such as YouTube and one-person media. The results of this study can be used as basic data for analyzing the big data in understanding the Chinese cosmetics market and establishing appropriate strategies and marketing utilization of related companies.

• Journal of Multimedia Information System
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.287-294
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• 2015

We are living in epoch of information when Internet touches all aspects of our lives. Therefore, it provides a plenty of services each of which benefits people in different ways. Electronic Mail (E-mail), File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Voice/Video Communication, Search Engines are bright examples of Internet services. Between them Social Network Services (SNS) continuously gain its popularity over the past years. Most popular SNSs like Facebook, Weibo and Twitter generate millions of data every minute. Twitter is one of SNS which allows its users post short instant messages. They, 100 million, posted 340 million tweets per day (2012)[1]. Often big amount of data contains lots of noisy data which can be defined as uninteresting and unclassifiable data. However, researchers can take advantage of such huge information in order to analyze and extract meaningful and interesting features. The way to collect SNS data as well as tweets is handled by crawlers. Twitter crawler has recently emerged as a great tool to crawl Twitter data as well as tweets. In this project, we develop Twitter Crawler system which enables us to extract Twitter data. We implemented our system in Java language along with MySQL. We use Twitter4J which is a java library for communicating with Twitter API. The application, first, connects to Twitter API, then retrieves tweets, and stores them into database. We also develop crawling strategies to efficiently extract tweets in terms of time and amount.