• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.15 no.7
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• pp.389-402
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• 2015

Due to tough competition among social network services, technological specification alone could not be an adoption factor by the users. Instead, emotional factors such as a brand image and feeling towards an SNS brand became important factors in service differentiation. This study examined Korean young users perception of brand personalities of three social network services, Facebook, Kakao Story, and Band. It also analyzed the influence of the perception of brand personality, brand-self-image congruence, and brand affect on brand recommendation to others. The authors conducted a survey of Korean college students. The results indicate that SNS users perceived three SNS's brand personalities differently, and the positive perception of an SNS service has a positive effect on brand recommendation. Brand personality, brand-self-image congruence, and brand affect combined determine brand recommendation. When the brand personality variable is statistically controlled, brand affect has strong effect on brand recommendation.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.452-464
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to identify the brand personality factors of SNS based on SNS consumers and to examine the effect of SNS brand personality factors on the recognition of mobile native ads in SNS. As a property of mobile native advertisement, research model is suggested by introducing information, reliability, entertainment, interferences, and interactivity as research variables. And SNS users were surveyed. Through the online survey, 341 copies were used for the analysis. According to the results of the analysis, five characteristics of SNS brand personality factors such as 'sincerity', 'enthusiasm', 'charm', 'practical', and 'community' were derived. Among these, 'sincerity', 'enthusiastic', and 'community' brand attributes have a positive effect on most of mobile native advertising attributes, but 'practical' brand characteristics negatively. The attractiveness of the brand was not related to the mobile native advertisement.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.119-139
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• 2023

Generation MZ has emerged as a significant consumer segment and trendsetter in the fashion market of South Korea. Fashion designer brands have become popular among this generation by offering a range of fashion content on social network services (SNS) based on fresh and trendy designs. Despite the growing market share of fashion designer brands in the industry, previous research has mainly focused on brand personality in line with the characteristics of traditional fashion brands. Therefore, this study aims to derive brand personality and SNS characteristics of fashion designer brands based on previous research and investigate the influence of these factors on brand preference and behavioral intention. Moreover, it examines how this influencing mechanism fluctuates based on the consumer type (i.e., innovative type vs. price-sensitive type). Based on an online survey of 256 Korean adults with experience in fashion designer brands, this study identified the influencing mechanisms on purchase intention and word-of-mouth intention. This study contributes to empirical investigations of consumer brand preference and behavior intention in fashion designer brands through the brand equity model. It also offers insight into developing a segmented brand strategy by considering the variations in the influence mechanism of behavioral intention across different consumer types.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.450-461
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• 2016

This study set out to analyze the effects of user personality on the brand satisfaction and loyalty of SNS to identify factors influencing SNS usage. For that purpose, the study defined extraversion, curiosity, and self-esteem, three factors of Instagram user personality, as exogenous variables, focusing on Instagram, which has made a relatively sharp rise in the usage rate among many different SNS applications. With brand satisfaction and loyalty set as endogenous variables, the investigator introduced brand satisfaction as a mediating variable for the effects of extraversion, curiosity, and self-esteem on brand loyalty. A survey was conducted with Korean people with an experience of using Instagram, and total 396 questionnaires were used in final analysis. The findings show that all of three exogenous variables had positive (+) effects on brand satisfaction with extraversion and curiosity having positive (+) effects on brand loyalty, as well. And the findings demonstrate that brand satisfaction was a mediating variable and that curiosity was the personality factor that had the biggest influences on satisfaction and loyalty.

• International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.152-161
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• 2023

Modern people live a life connected with the real world and the virtual world by relying on the new media of enterprises and social consumption led by innovative technologies. In this environment, virtual influencers actively communicate with consumers and build relationships through social media, which is a new marketing tool that has attracted widespread attention. From a business perspective, it is necessary to have a solid understanding of this phenomenon, and then explore communication strategies to effectively develop virtual influencers. To investigate followers' preference for virtual influencers, this study employs the Q-method, which studies human subjective attributes, an empirical research effort to uncover complex issues in human subjectivity. To determine the factors that trigger people's voluntary and active practice and the preference degree of virtual influencers, the Q method is implemented to examine human subjectivity, thoughts and attitudes. According to the results of this study, virtual influencers are a new group of idols full of vitality. The interviews found that there are still many virtual influencers who do not know about followers, but each type can be clearly understood through the intuitive understanding of the interviewees. Divided out, type 1 one egoideal virtual influencers aim to represent an idealized version of the creator or target audience. Embodies ideal physical characteristics, personality or lifestyle desired by the audience. Type 2 is charismatic and attractive, and has the characteristics of most virtual influencers. It is suggested that it can be developed into a potential type, doing brand cooperation, and content production on social media platforms. Type 3: Game animation, derived from the image of characters in games or comics, with stylized features and energetic personalities, which can be integrated into games or entertainment experiences. Type 4 development potential type is the most successful type among virtual imagers, and it is also the purpose of marketing virtual influencers. It is essential that brand endorsement on social media platforms, integrated marketing, and driving advertising traffic. It is recommended to improve production technology to reduce investment costs.

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