• Asian Journal of Business Environment
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.33-41
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• 2018

Purpose - This study focused on the attitude differences towards harmony-focused Ad and uniqueness-focused Ad, also those towards brand advertised in each of the two type Ads between self-construals. Research design, data, and methodology - Main survey was conducted online with the people in China, and collected 107 data through harmony Ad questionnaire and 109 data through uniqueness Ad questionnaire. Anova and t-test were used to verify hypotheses. Results - First, More positive attitude towards harmony-focused Ad and the brand in it there was at interdependent Chinese consumers than at independent Chinese consumers. Second, the independent Chinese consumers and the interdependent Chinese consumers did not form significant attitude difference towards uniqueness-focused Ad. However the independent Chinese consumers showed more positive attitude towards the brand in the uniqueness-focused Ad than the interdependent Chinese consumers. Conclusions - By highlighting the attributes of Chinese consumers' self-construal, to appeal to interdependent Chinese consumers, marketers should develop harmony-focused advertisement, and they should appeal to independent Chinese consumers by using uniqueness-focused advertisement. However the harmony might be pursued as the main content in the overall environment by Chinese people. Therefore it is necessary for the marketers to consider the harmony even when appealing them by emphasizing the uniqueness.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.101-118
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• 2019

Alexithymia refers to a psychological deficit of identifying and describing one's feelings. It has benn reported that the level of alexithymia of East-Asians is generally higher than that of Western Europeans. Recently one research conducted in U.S. suggested that the interdependent self-construal from East-Asians' collectivism culture might be a cause of this cross-cultural difference. In the current study, we examined the relationship between the level of independent and interdependent self-construal of Korean college students and their level of alexithymia, as well as their ambivalence over emotional expressiveness and emotion suppression. The correlation analysis shows that the Korean students' alexithymia level does not correlate with their level of interdependent self-construal, but negatively correlates with their level of independent self-construal. Moreover, it is also correlated with the level of ambivalence over emotional expressiveness(AEE) and emotion suppression(ES). Thus, we setup a double-mediation model between the deficiency of independent self-construal and alexithymia via AEE and ES, and estimate mediation effects using Hayes and Preacher(2014)s' Process analysis. The results show that the deficiency of independent self-construal has a direct effect as well as indirect effects of AEE and ES on the alexithymia level. Further analysis on the indirect effects reveals that the mediation effect of AEE and the double mediation effect of ES via AEE are significant, but the mediation effect of ES is not significant. Current results imply that the interdependent self-construal from the traditional collectivistic culture may not cause Korean college students' problems on the emotional expression, but the relatively lower independent self-construal may cause them. The deficiency of independent self-constural may raise up the level of self-defensive ambivalence over emotional expressiveness and suppress emotional expression by themselves, which can result in alexithymia.