• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.35-48
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• 2010

Today, the fashion market challenged by a maturing retail market needs a new paradigm in the "evolution of brand" to improve their comparative advantages. An important issue in fashion marketing is lifestyle brand extension with a specific aim to meet consumers' specific needs for their changing lifestyle. For fashion brand extensions into lifestyle product categories, Gen Y and Baby Boomer are emerging as "prospects"-Baby Boomers who are renovating their lifestyle, and generation Y experiencing changes in their life stage-with demands for buying new products. Therefore, it is imperative that apparel companies pay special attention to the consumer cohort for brand extension to create and manage their brand equity in a new product category. The purposes of this study are to (a) evaluate brand equity between parent and extension brands; (b) identify consumers' perceived marketing elements for brand extension; and (c) estimate a structural equation model for examining causative relationship between marketing elements and brand equity for brand extensions in lifestyle product category including home fashion items for the selected two groups (e.g., Gen Y, and Baby boomer). For theoretical frameworks, this study focused on the traditional marketing 4P's mix to identify what marketing element is more importantly related to brand extension equity for this study. It is assumed that comparable marketing capability can be critical to establish "brand extension equity", leads to successfully entering the new categories. Drawing from the relevant literature, this study developed research hypotheses incorporating brand equity factors and marketing elements by focusing on the selected consumers (e.g., Gen Y, Baby Boomer). In the context of brand extension in the lifestyle products, constructs of brand equity consist of brand awareness/association, brand perceptions (e.g., perceived quality, emotional value) and brand resonance adapted from CBBE factors (Keller, 2001). It is postulated that the marketing elements create brand extension equity in terms of brand awareness/association, brand perceptions by the brand extension into lifestyle products, which in turn influence brand resonance. For data collection, the sample was comprised of Korean female consumers in Gen Y and Baby Boomer consumer categories who have a high demand for lifestyle products due to changing their lifecycles. A total of 651 usable questionnaires were obtained from female consumers of Gen Y (n=326) and Baby Boomer (n=325) in South Korea. Structural and measurement models using a correlation matrix was estimated using LISREL 8.8. Findings indicated that perceived marketing elements for brand extension consisted of three factors: price/store image, product, and advertising. In the model of Gen Y consumers, price/store image had a positive effect on brand equity factors (e.g., brand awareness/association, perceived quality), while product had positive effect on emotional value in the brand extensions; and the brand awareness/association was likely to increase the perceived quality and emotional value, leading to brand resonance for brand extensions in the lifestyle products. In the model of Baby Boomer consumers, price/store image had a positive effect on perceived quality, which created brand resonance of brand extension; and product had a positive effect on perceived quality and emotional value, which leads to brand resonance for brand extension in the lifestyle products. However, advertising was negatively related to brand equity for both groups. This study provides an insight for fashion marketers in developing a successful brand extension strategy, leading to a sustainable competitive advantage. This study complements and extends prior works in the brand extension through critical factors of marketing efforts that affect brand extension success. Findings support a synergy effect on leveraging of fashion brand extensions (Aaker and Keller, 1990; Tauber, 1988; Shine et al., 2007; Pitta and Katsanis, 1995) in conjunction with marketing actions for entering into the new product category. Thus, it is recommended that marketers targeting both Gen Y and Baby Boomer can reduce marketing cost for entering the new product category (e.g., home furnishings) by standardized marketing efforts; fashion marketers can (a) offer extension lines with premium ranges of price; (b) place an emphasis on upscale features of store image positioning by a retail channel (e.g., specialty department store) in Korea, and (c) combine apparel with lifestyle product assortments including innovative style and designer’s limited editions. With respect to brand equity, a key to successful brand extension is consumers’ brand awareness or association that ensures brand identity with new product category. It is imperative for marketers to have knowledge of what contributes to more concrete associations in a market entry into new product categories. For fashion brands, a second key of brand extension can be a "luxury" lifestyle approach into new product categories, in that higher price or store image had impact on perceived quality that established brand resonance. More importantly, this study increases the theoretical understanding of brand extension and suggests directions for marketers as they establish marketing program at Gen Y and Baby Boomers.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.101-123
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• 2012

Currently, Social Media, it has widely a renown keyword and its related social trends and businesses have been fastly applied into various contexts. Social media has become an important research area for scholars interested in online technologies and cyber space and their social impacts. Social media is not only including web-based services but also mobile-based application services that allow people to share various style information and knowledge through online connection. Social media users have tendency to common identity- and bond-attachment through interactions such as 'thumbs up', 'reply note', 'forwarding', which may have driven from various factors and may result in delivering information, sharing knowledge, and specific experiences et al. Even further, almost of all social media sites provide and connect unknown strangers depending on shared interests, political views, or enjoyable activities, and other stuffs incorporating the creation of contents, which provides benefits to users. As fast developing digital devices including smartphone, tablet PC, internet based blogging, and photo and video clips, scholars desperately have began to study regarding diverse issues connecting human beings' motivations and the behavioral results which may be articulated by the format of antecedents as well as consequences related to contents that people create via social media. Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, or Cyworld users are more and more getting close each other and build up their relationships by a different style. In this sense, people use social media as tools for maintain pre-existing network, creating new people socially, and at the same time, explicitly find some business opportunities using personal and unlimited public networks. In terms of theory in explaining this phenomenon, social capital is a concept that describes the benefits one receives from one's relationship with others. Thereby, social media use is closely related to the form and connected of people, which is a bridge that can be able to achieve informational benefits of a heterogeneous network of people and common identity- and bonding-attachment which emphasizes emotional benefits from community members or friend group. Social capital would be resources accumulated through the relationships among people, which can be considered as an investment in social relations with expected returns and may achieve benefits from the greater access to and use of resources embedded in social networks. Social media using for their social capital has vastly been adopted in a cyber world, however, there has been little explaining the phenomenon theoretically how people may take advantages or opportunities through interaction among people, why people may interactively give willingness to help or their answers. The individual consciously express themselves in an online space, so called, common identity- or bonding-attachments. Common-identity attachment is the focus of the weak ties, which are loose connections between individuals who may provide useful information or new perspectives for one another but typically not emotional support, whereas common-bonding attachment is explained that between individuals in tightly-knit, emotionally close relationship such as family and close friends. The common identify- and bonding-attachment are mainly studying on-offline setting, which individual convey an impression to others that are expressed to own interest to others. Thus, individuals expect to meet other people and are trying to behave self-presentation engaging in opposite partners accordingly. As developing social media, individuals are motivated to disclose self-disclosures of open and honest using diverse cues such as verbal and nonverbal and pictorial and video files to their friends as well as passing strangers. Social media context, common identity- and bond-attachment for self-presentation seems different compared with face-to-face context. In the realm of social media, social users look for self-impression by posting text messages, pictures, video files. Under the digital environments, people interact to work, shop, learn, entertain, and be played. Social media provides increasingly the kinds of intention and behavior in online. Typically, identity and bond social capital through self-presentation is the intentional and tangible component of identity. At social media, people try to engage in others via a desired impression, which can maintain through performing coherent and complementary communications including displaying signs, symbols, brands made of digital stuffs(information, interest, pictures, etc,). In marketing area, consumers traditionally show common-identity as they select clothes, hairstyles, automobiles, logos, and so on, to impress others in any given context in a shopping mall or opera. To examine these social capital and attachment, we combined a social capital theory with an attachment theory into our research model. Our research model focuses on the common identity- and bond-attachment how they are formulated through social capitals: cognitive capital, structural capital, relational capital, and individual characteristics. Thus, we examined that individual online kindness, self-rated expertise, and social relation influence to build common identity- and bond-attachment, and the attachment effects make an impact on both the willingness to help, however, common bond seems not to show directly impact on information sharing. As a result, we discover that the social capital and attachment theories are mainly applicable to the context of social media and usage in the individual networks. We collected sample data of 256 who are using social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Cyworld and analyzed the suggested hypotheses through the Structural Equation Model by AMOS. This study analyzes the direct and indirect relationship between the social network service usage and outcomes. Antecedents of kindness, confidence of knowledge, social relations are significantly affected to the mediators common identity-and bond attachments, however, interestingly, network externality does not impact, which we assumed that a size of network was a negative because group members would not significantly contribute if the members do not intend to actively interact with each other. The mediating variables had a positive effect on toward willingness to help. Further, common identity attachment has stronger significant on shared information.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.262-268
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• 2010

Virtual communities (VCs) have developed rapidly, with more and more people participating in them to exchange information and opinions. A virtual community is a group of people who may or may not meet one another face to face, and who exchange words and ideas through the mediation of computer bulletin boards and networks. A business-to-consumer virtual community (B2CVC) is a commercial group that creates a trustworthy environment intended to motivate consumers to be more willing to buy from an online store. B2CVCs create a social atmosphere through information contribution such as recommendations, reviews, and ratings of buyers and sellers. Although the importance of B2CVCs has been recognized, few studies have been conducted to examine members' word-of-mouth behavior within these communities. This study proposes a model of involvement, statistics, trust, "stickiness," and word-of-mouth in a B2CVC and explores the relationships among these elements based on empirical data. The objectives are threefold: (i) to empirically test a B2CVC model that integrates measures of beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors; (ii) to better understand the nature of these relationships, specifically through word-of-mouth as a measure of revenue generation; and (iii) to better understand the role of stickiness of B2CVC in CRM marketing. The model incorporates three key elements concerning community members: (i) their beliefs, measured in terms of their involvement assessment; (ii) their attitudes, measured in terms of their satisfaction and trust; and, (iii) their behavior, measured in terms of site stickiness and their word-of-mouth. Involvement is considered the motivation for consumers to participate in a virtual community. For B2CVC members, information searching and posting have been proposed as the main purpose for their involvement. Satisfaction has been reviewed as an important indicator of a member's overall community evaluation, and conceptualized by different levels of member interactions with their VC. The formation and expansion of a VC depends on the willingness of members to share information and services. Researchers have found that trust is a core component facilitating the anonymous interaction in VCs and e-commerce, and therefore trust-building in VCs has been a common research topic. It is clear that the success of a B2CVC depends on the stickiness of its members to enhance purchasing potential. Opinions communicated and information exchanged between members may represent a type of written word-of-mouth. Therefore, word-of-mouth is one of the primary factors driving the diffusion of B2CVCs across the Internet. Figure 1 presents the research model and hypotheses. The model was tested through the implementation of an online survey of CTrip Travel VC members. A total of 243 collected questionnaires was reduced to 204 usable questionnaires through an empirical process of data cleaning. The study's hypotheses examined the extent to which involvement, satisfaction, and trust influence B2CVC stickiness and members' word-of-mouth. Structural Equation Modeling tested the hypotheses in the analysis, and the structural model fit indices were within accepted thresholds: ${\chi}^2^$/df was 2.76, NFI was .904, IFI was .931, CFI was .930, and RMSEA was .017. Results indicated that involvement has a significant influence on satisfaction (p<0.001, ${\beta}$=0.809). The proportion of variance in satisfaction explained by members' involvement was over half (adjusted $R^2$=0.654), reflecting a strong association. The effect of involvement on trust was also statistically significant (p<0.001, ${\beta}$=0.751), with 57 percent of the variance in trust explained by involvement (adjusted $R^2$=0.563). When the construct "stickiness" was treated as a dependent variable, the proportion of variance explained by the variables of trust and satisfaction was relatively low (adjusted $R^2$=0.331). Satisfaction did have a significant influence on stickiness, with ${\beta}$=0.514. However, unexpectedly, the influence of trust was not even significant (p=0.231, t=1.197), rejecting that proposed hypothesis. The importance of stickiness in the model was more significant because of its effect on e-WOM with ${\beta}$=0.920 (p<0.001). Here, the measures of Stickiness explain over eighty of the variance in e-WOM (Adjusted $R^2$=0.846). Overall, the results of the study supported the hypothesized relationships between members' involvement in a B2CVC and their satisfaction with and trust of it. However, trust, as a traditional measure in behavioral models, has no significant influence on stickiness in the B2CVC environment. This study contributes to the growing body of literature on B2CVCs, specifically addressing gaps in the academic research by integrating measures of beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors in one model. The results provide additional insights to behavioral factors in a B2CVC environment, helping to sort out relationships between traditional measures and relatively new measures. For practitioners, the identification of factors, such as member involvement, that strongly influence B2CVC member satisfaction can help focus technological resources in key areas. Global e-marketers can develop marketing strategies directly targeting B2CVC members. In the global tourism business, they can target Chinese members of a B2CVC by providing special discounts for active community members or developing early adopter programs to encourage stickiness in the community. Future studies are called for, and more sophisticated modeling, to expand the measurement of B2CVC member behavior and to conduct experiments across industries, communities, and cultures.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.141-170
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• 2010

User created content (UCC) is created and shared by common users on line. From the user's perspective, the increase of UCCs has led to an expansion of alternative means of communications, while from the business perspective UCCs have formed an environment in which an abundant amount of new contents can be produced. Despite outward quantitative growth, however, many aspects of UCCs do not meet the expectations of general users in terms of quality, and this can be observed through pirated contents and user-copied contents. The purpose of this research is to investigate effective methods for fostering production of creative user-generated content. This study proposes two core elements, namely, reward and motivation, which are believed to enhance content creativity as well as the mediating factor and users' committement, which will be effective for bridging the increasing motivation and content creativity. Based on this perspective, this research takes an in-depth look at issues related to constructing the dimensions of reward and motivation in UCC services for creative content product, which are identified in three phases. First, three dimensions of rewards have been proposed: task dimension, social dimension, and organizational dimention. The task dimension rewards are related to the inherent characteristics of a task such as writing blog articles and pasting photos. Four concrete ways of providing task-related rewards in UCC environments are suggested in this study, which include skill variety, task significance, task identity, and autonomy. The social dimensioni rewards are related to the connected relationships among users. The organizational dimension consists of monetary payoff and recognition from others. Second, the two types of motivations are suggested to be affected by the diverse rewards schemes: intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation occurs when people create new UCC contents for its' own sake, whereas extrinsic motivation occurs when people create new contents for other purposes such as fame and money. Third, commitments are suggested to work as important mediating variables between motivation and content creativity. We believe commitments are especially important in online environments because they have been found to exert stronger impacts on the Internet users than other relevant factors do. Two types of commitments are suggested in this study: emotional commitment and continuity commitment. Finally, content creativity is proposed as the final dependent variable in this study. We provide a systematic method to measure the creativity of UCC content based on the prior studies in creativity measurement. The method includes expert evaluation of blog pages posted by the Internet users. In order to test the theoretical model of our study, 133 active blog users were recruited to participate in a group discussion as well as a survey. They were asked to fill out a questionnaire on their commitment, motivation and rewards of creating UCC contents. At the same time, their creativity was measured by independent experts using Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. Finally, two independent users visited the study participants' blog pages and evaluated their content creativity using the Creative Products Semantic Scale. All the data were compiled and analyzed through structural equation modeling. We first conducted a confirmatory factor analysis to validate the measurement model of our research. It was found that measures used in our study satisfied the requirement of reliability, convergent validity as well as discriminant validity. Given the fact that our measurement model is valid and reliable, we proceeded to conduct a structural model analysis. The results indicated that all the variables in our model had higher than necessary explanatory powers in terms of R-square values. The study results identified several important reward shemes. First of all, skill variety, task importance, task identity, and automony were all found to have significant influences on the intrinsic motivation of creating UCC contents. Also, the relationship with other users was found to have strong influences upon both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Finally, the opportunity to get recognition for their UCC work was found to have a significant impact on the extrinsic motivation of UCC users. However, different from our expectation, monetary compensation was found not to have a significant impact on the extrinsic motivation. It was also found that commitment was an important mediating factor in UCC environment between motivation and content creativity. A more fully mediating model was found to have the highest explanation power compared to no-mediation or partially mediated models. This paper ends with implications of the study results. First, from the theoretical perspective this study proposes and empirically validates the commitment as an important mediating factor between motivation and content creativity. This result reflects the characteristics of online environment in which the UCC creation activities occur voluntarily. Second, from the practical perspective this study proposes several concrete reward factors that are germane to the UCC environment, and their effectiveness to the content creativity is estimated. In addition to the quantitive results of relative importance of the reward factrs, this study also proposes concrete ways to provide the rewards in the UCC environment based on the FGI data that are collected after our participants finish asnwering survey questions. Finally, from the methodological perspective, this study suggests and implements a way to measure the UCC content creativity independently from the content generators' creativity, which can be used later by future research on UCC creativity. In sum, this study proposes and validates important reward features and their relations to the motivation, commitment, and the content creativity in UCC environment, which is believed to be one of the most important factors for the success of UCC and Web 2.0. As such, this study can provide significant theoretical as well as practical bases for fostering creativity in UCC contents.

• The Journal of Korean Society for School & Community Health Education
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.63-83
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• 2008

Objectives: This study was to examine HIV/AIDS knowledge of transmission, attitudes toward homosexuals on stigma of HIV/AIDS and discriminatory attitudes towards person with HIV/AIDS (PWHAs) by middle and high school students in Seoul, Korea. Methods: The population of this study is middle and high school students in Seoul, Korea. Eight junior high schools and eight senior high schools were selected randomly. Three thousand and one hundred thirty-one students (1704 males and 1397 males) from 16 schools participated in the survey, and 2.977 cases were analyzed. A self-administered questionnaire measuring socio-demographic variables, HIV/AIDS knowledge of transmission, sigma of HIV/AIDS (3 items, 5-point Likert-type scale) and discriminatory attitudes PWHAs (5 items, 5-point Likert-type scale) was utilized. The Structural Equation Modeling was employed to investigate the research Model. Results: The empirical study shows that a number of statistical hypotheses are significant. The stigma and discriminatory attitudes PWHAs were significantly different by middle and high school students. The attitudes toward homosexuals and HIV/AIDS knowledge of transmission were important factors on stigma and discriminatory attitudes PWHAs. Socio-demographical variables such as sex was related to the stigma and discriminatory attitudes PWHAs. Conclusion: Therefore, it is important to design HIV prevention strategies that increase in positive attitudes towards PWHAs.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.87-106
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• 2013

In the service-oriented economy, knowledge and skills are considered core resources to secure competitive advantages and service innovation. Knowledge management capability, which facilitates to produce, share, accumulate and reuse knowledge, becomes as important as knowledge itself to create service value. Along with knowledge management capability, dynamic capability and operational capability are the key capabilities related to managing service delivery processes. Previous studies indicated that these three capabilities are related to service innovation. Although separately investigate the relationship between the three capabilities. The purpose of this study is 1) to define variables that have effects on service innovation including knowledge management capability, dynamic capability and operational capability, and 2) to empirically test to identify relationship among variables. In this study, knowledge management capability is defined as the capability to manage knowledge process. Dynamic capability is regarded as the firm's ability to integrate, build, and reconfigure internal and external competences to address rapidly changing environments. Operational capability refers to a high-level routine that, together with its implementing input flows, confers upon an organization's management a set of decision options for producing significant outputs of a particular type. The proposed research model was tested against the data collected through the survey method. The survey questionnaire was distributed to the managers who participated in an educational program for management consulting. Each individual who answered the questionnaire represented a knowledge based service firm. About 212 surveys questionnaires were sent via e-mail or directly delivered to respondents. The number of useable responses was 93. Measurement items were adapted from previous studies to reflect the characteristics of the industry each informant worked in. All measurement items were in, 5 point Likert scale with anchors ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). Out of 93 respondents, about 81% were male, 82% of respondents were in their 30s. In terms of jobs, managers were 39.78%, professions/technicians were 24.73%, researchers were 12.90%, and sales people were 10.75%. Most of respondents worked for medium size enterprises (47,31%) in their, less than 30 employees (46.24%) in their number of employees, and less than 10 million USD (65.59%) in terms of sales volume. To test the proposed research model, structural equation modeling (SEM) technique (SPSS 16.0 and AMOS version 5) was used. We found that the three organizational capabilities have influence on service innovation directly or indirectly. Knowledge management capability directly affects dynamic capability and service innovation but indirectly affect operational capability through dynamic capability. Dynamic capability has no direct impact on service innovation, but influence service innovation indirectly through operational capability. Operational capability was found to positively affect service innovation. In sum, three organizational capabilities (knowledge management capability, dynamic capability and operational capability) need to be strategically managed at firm level, because organizational capabilities are significantly related to service innovation. An interesting result is that dynamic capability has a positive effect on service innovation only indirectly through operational capability. This result indicates that service innovation might have a characteristics similar to process innovation rather than product orientation. The results also show that organizational capabilities are inter-correlated to influence each other. Dynamic capability enables effective resource management, arrangement, and integration. Through these dynamic capability affected activities, strategic agility and responsibility get strength. Knowledge management capability intensify dynamic capability and service innovation. Knowledge management capability is the basis of dynamic capability as well. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed further in the conclusion section.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.119-138
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• 2016

Since the Industrial Revolution, which made the mass production and mass distribution of standardized goods possible, machine-made (manufactured) products have accounted for the majority of the market. However, in recent years, the phenomenon of purchasing even more expensive handmade products has become a noticeable trend as consumers have started to acknowledge the value of handmade products, such as the craftsman's commitment, belief in their quality and scarcity, and the sense of self-esteem from having them,. Consumer interest in these handmade products has shown explosive growth and has been coupled with the recent development of three-dimensional (3D) printing technologies. Etsy.com is the world's largest online handmade platform. It is no different from any other online platform; it provides an online market where buyers and sellers virtually meet to share information and transact business. However, Etsy.com is different in that shops within this platform only deal with handmade products in a variety of categories, ranging from jewelry to toys. Since its establishment in 2005, despite being limited to handmade products, Etsy.com has enjoyed rapid growth in membership, transaction volume, and revenue. Most recently in April 2015, it raised funds through an initial public offering (IPO) of more than 1.8 billion USD, which demonstrates the huge potential of online handmade platforms. After the success of Etsy.com, various types of online handmade platforms such as Handmade at Amazon, ArtFire, DaWanda, and Craft is ART have emerged and are now competing with each other, at the same time, which has increased the size of the market. According to Deloitte's 2015 holiday survey on which types of gifts the respondents plan to buy during the holiday season, about 16% of U.S. consumers chose "homemade or craft items (e.g., Etsy purchase)," which was the same rate as those for the computer game and shoes categories. This indicates that consumer interests in online handmade platforms will continue to rise in the future. However, this high interest in the market for handmade products and their platforms has not yet led to academic research. Most extant studies have only focused on machine-made products and intelligent services for them. This indicates a lack of studies on handmade products and their intelligent services on virtual platforms. Therefore, this study used signaling theory and prior research on the effects of sellers' characteristics on their performance (e.g., total sales and price premiums) in the buyer-seller relationship to identify the key influencing e-Image factors (e.g., reputation, size, information sharing, and length of relationship). Then, their impacts on the performance of shops within the online handmade platform were empirically examined; the dataset was collected from Etsy.com through the application of web harvesting technology. The results from the structural equation modeling revealed that the reputation, size, and information sharing have significant effects on the total sales, while the reputation and length of relationship influence price premiums. This study extended the online platform research into online handmade platform research by identifying key influencing e-Image factors on within-platform shop's total sales and price premiums based on signaling theory and then performed a statistical investigation. These findings are expected to be a stepping stone for future studies on intelligent online handmade services as well as handmade products themselves. Furthermore, the findings of the study provide online handmade platform operators with practical guidelines on how to implement intelligent online handmade services. They should also help shop managers build their marketing strategies in a more specific and effective manner by suggesting key influencing e-Image factors. The results of this study should contribute to the vitalization of intelligent online handmade services by providing clues on how to maximize within-platform shops' total sales and price premiums.

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.23-52
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• 2015

Purpose This study aims to understand the role of digital knowledge in accepting the green technology. This study combined digital option theory with the second version of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2). Contrary to other studies in which the UTAUT2 is used to explain IT adoption behavior, we look at the relationship between IT and the UTAUT2 from a new angle, incorporating an important aspect of IT, that is, digitized knowledge richness, as a determinant of the UTAUT2. Design/methodology/approach Grounded in the UTAUT2, a content analysis was conducted to investigate novel constructs dedicated to explaining green technology adoption. In this study, an amended version of the UTAUT2 specific to green technology is offered that better explains the green technology adoption behavior of consumers. Using the items identified by content analysis, we developed a questionnaire with 36 survey items. We measured all the items on a seven-point Likert-type scale. We randomly selected 402 survey respondents from a set of panel data. After a pilot study, we analyzed the main survey data by using PLS 2.0M3 and SPSS 20.0, and employed structural equation modeling to test the hypotheses. Findings The results suggest that the UTAUT2 was found to be extendable to technologies other than conventional IT. Social influence is more significant than conventional utilitarian and hedonic-based constructs such as those utilized in the UTAUT and UTAUT2 in explaining adoption behavior in the context of green technologies. The hypothesized connection between digitized knowledge richness and adoption intention was supported by the results of studies on the role of IT in formation of attitudes toward eco-friendly production. The results also indicate that digital knowledge can also encourage people to try green technology when they learn that their peers are already using the technology successfully.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.73-82
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• 2016

Purpose - Counterproductive work behavior(CWB) was typically categorized according to the behavior whether it targets other people(i.e., interpersonal CWB: I-CWB). Employing organizations(i.e., organizational CWB: O-CWB) has emerged as major concerns among researchers, managers, and the general public. An abundance of researches has informed us about the understanding for the antecedents of CWB, whereas little is known about the antecedents of CWB directed distribution service in employee's emotional labor. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to propose a research model in which surface acting enhances emotional exhaustion as an emotional labor strategy, which eventually increases counterproductive work behavior(including I-CWM and O-CWB). Research design, data, and methodology - This empirical research data were gathered from the samples of full time frontline hotel employees(including front office, call center, food/beverage, concierge, and room service) in South Korea. Six hotels were selected ranged from four to five stars, including privately owned and joint-venture properties. A convenience sampling method was used to select hotels. Full time frontline hotel employees from the six hotels were surveyed using a self-administered instrument for data collection. With the strong support of hotel managers, a total of 300 questionnaires were distributed, and 252 responses were collected indicating a response rate of 84.0%. In the process of working with the 252 samples, structural equation modeling is employed to test research hypotheses(H1: The relationship between surface acting and Interpersonal counterproductive work behavior(I-CWB) is mediated by emotional exhaustion, H2: The relationship between surface acting and organizational counterproductive work behavior(O-CWB) is mediated by emotional exhaustion). SPSS 18.0 and M-Plus 7.31 software were used for the data analysis. Descriptive statistics were used to assess the distribution of the employee profiles and correlations between factors. M-Plus 7.31 software was used to test the model fit, validity, and reliability of the factors, significance of the relationship between factors, and the effects of factors in the model. Results - To test our mediation hypotheses, we used an analytical strategy suggested by Preacher & Hayes (2008) and Shrout & Bolger (2002). This mediation approach directly tests the indirect effect between the predictor and the criterion variables through the mediator via a bootstrapping procedure. Thus, it addresses some weaknesses associated with the Sobel test. We found that surface acting was positively related to emotional exhaustion. Furthermore, emotional exhaustion was a significant predictor from the two kinds of counterproductive work behavior. In addition, surface acting was not significantly associated with the two kinds of counterproductive work behavior. These results indicated that the surface acting by frontline hotel employees was associated with higher emotional exhaustion, which is related with higher interpersonal counterproductive work behavior(I-CWB) and organizational counterproductive work behavior(O-CWB). In sum, we confirmed that the positive relationship between surface acting and the two kinds of counterproductive work behavior was fully mediated by emotional exhaustion. Conclusions - The current research broadens the conceptual work and empirical studies in counterproductive work behavior literature by representing a fundamental mechanism that how surface acting affects counterproductive work behavior.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.65-88
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• 2004

In general, empowerment is defined as the motivational concept of autonomy and self-efficacy. Recently, the concept of empowerment is applied to improve organizational staff's job satisfaction and organizational commitment in many organizations. Empower-ment in service organizations, i.e., hospitals, has certainly generated more publicity than any other organizations. The objectives of this study are, first, to measure the degree of hospital employees' empowerment using Spreitzer(1995)'s empowerment theory, second, to analyze the causal relationship of organizational and job characteristics, a degree of empowerment, and organizational performance(job satisfaction and organizational commitment), and third, to offer the strategy for the improvement of job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Spreitzer insists that the empowerment is composed of 4 dimensions(meaning, competence, self-determination, and impact). And he argues that various work-related characteristics is a direct cause of empowerment and the indirect cause of job satisfaction and organizational commitment, mediated by the empowerment latent variable. In order to perform this study, data were collected by self-administered questionnaires from hospital employees working in administrative department of 3 university hospitals in Inchon and Kyunggi-Do region. The number of cases is 181(response rate; 86%). The Collected data were analyzed with SPSS Ver. 10.0 and AMOSV Ver. 4.0. First, to test validity of variables, the factor analysis was used. Second, to test reliability, Cronbach's alpha coefficients was calculated. Cronbach's alpha of empowerment variable is 0.8323 showing that there's no problem in regard to the internal consistency. Also the Cronbach's alpha of other variables are 0.8301 of the degree of perceived control, 0.6705 of job characteristics, O.8787 of compensation, 0.9254 of job satisfaction, and 0.8389 of organizational commitment, respectively. Among the questions of job characteristics, two survey questions are deleted due to lowering the reliability. Third, to test multicollinearity and correlation of variables, the correlation analysis was performed. There was no problem of multicollinearity. Finally structural equation modelling (SEM) analysis was conducted to find the causal relationship of organizational and job Characteristics, empowerment, job satisfaction and organizational commitment. The 16 variables are included for the SEM analysis. The major results of this study are as follows: First, in the case of model fitness, the condition of x$^2$ statistic(92.187) is not fully satisfied, but the indices of GFI(0.912), AGFI(0.863), NFI(0.917) and CFI(0.928) are partially satisfied, which needs to upper 0.90. Second, in the result of hypotheses testing, all hypotheses are accepted and have a positive effect in 95% or 99% confidence interval(P<0.05 or P<0.001) except the effect of compensation variable on empowerment(P=0.082). Third, in regard to the direct, indirect, and total effect of variables, the direct effect of perceived control, task characteristics, and compensation on job satisfaction are 0.728, 2.264, 0.328 and on organizational commitment are 0.094, 1.411, 0.418, respectively. Also the indirect effect of perceived control, task characteristics, and compensation on job satisfaction are 0.311, 0.196, 0.028 and on organizational commitment are 0.210, 0.132, 0.019, respectively. Thus, these findings imply that various work-related factors are direct effect of empowerment and indirect effect of result variables, job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Also These results showed that the workplace empowerment is significant mediating factor of employee's job satisfaction and organizational commitment.