• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.89-104
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• 2012

As the generalization of using computer and the internet, most people, who would decide the acceptance of new information technology (IT), may consider the current systems which have been used so far. The objective of this study was to analyze the relationships between technology acceptance model (TAM) and the switching costs which may incur during switching from the current system into another on. For this purpose, this study suggested the hypotheses, in which continuity cost and setup cost, two types of switching costs in IT adoption, would influence perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use respectively. Moreover, the moderation effects of system types, hedonic system and utilitarian system, on the relationships between switching costs and TAM, were also suggested as the hypotheses. In order to prove the validity of the hypotheses, two groups were surveyed. Before surveying, to the one group who were believed to be a user of 'Cyworld', a new blog service, Naver Blog, was introduced. Similarly, to another group, Google Docs was introduced. The analysis by Partial Least Square (PLS) approach showed that most hypotheses in this study were statistically supported.

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.35-58
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• 2010

Portal sites have been providing diverse services to attract new users and retain existing customers. Recently, they also added new services and increased quality of the services they provide to secure more customers. It is, however, not clear how people actually react to such activities. We wanted to understand the mechanism associated with users' continued usage intention of current Portal site. We assumed search, e-mail, information, community, e-commerce services as key services provided by most Portal sites and considered valuable by many customers. The quality of these services may directly affect users' continued usage intention. However, we can also assume that attractive alternatives and switching cost may have some influence on users' continued usage intention. Therefore, in this study, key variables pertaining to the quality of key services provided by Portal sites, attractive alternatives, and switching cost were examined to explain the dynamics of users' continued usage intention. An empirical study based on 891 survey responses showed the importance of the quality of key services for users' continued usage intention. Switching cost also demonstrated strong association with users' continued usage intention. However, attractive alternatives did not show a significant association with users' continued usage intention. We also found that the variable attractive alternatives moderated the relationship between the quality of search service and users' continued usage intention and the relationship between the quality of information service and users' continued usage intention. On the other hand, the variable switching cost showed a moderating effect on the relationship between the quality of e-mail service and users' continued usage intention and the relationship between the quality of community service and users' continued usage intention. This study implies that Portal sites need to make efforts not only to improve the quality of key services but also to consider attractiveness of other Portal sites' services and switching cost to secure more customers.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.153-161
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• 2020

The present study aimed to investigate the relationships among consumers' personality trait, brand tribalism, and brand commitment through brand trust and perceived switching cost. Data were collected from a convenience sample of three-hundred and ninety-four undergraduate students at a large Korean university. The participants consisted of 54.1% female (N = 213) and 45.9% male (N = 181). The results indicated that extraversion, conscientiousness, and emotional stability traits are directly related to brand tribalism. Also, brand commitment was directly associated with brand tribalism, brand trust, and perceived switching cost. In particular, our results showed the relationship between brand tribalism and brand commitment was mediated by brand trust, but not perceived switching cost. Therefore, our findings suggest that strong emotional connection of brand tribes may increase perceived switching costs and, consequently, affect brand commitment.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2002.05a
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• pp.400-402
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• 2002

Recently, it is requested interoperability and inter-connection among technologies due to network externalities and the rapid innovation in the telecommunications industry. Firms are technically tied up with the others the survival in the keen competition age. The switching cost is caused when a consumer changes his existing service to new one in the telecommunications. The switching cost hinders consumers from making a choice of better services or goods, and obstruct the fair competition among firms. In this paper, we will examin the effects on the competition among companies of the switching cost, and suggest national policies to promote the competition in the telecommunication markets.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.117-124
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• 2001

In a SRM drive, the on/off angles of each phase switch should be accurately controlled in order to control to torque and speed in a stable way, The accuracy of the switching angles is dependent upon the resolution of the encoder and the sampling period of the microprocessor. However, as the speed increase, the amount of the switching angle deviation from the preset values is also increased by the sampling period of the microprocessor. Therefore, a low cost encoder suitable for a practical and stable SRM drive is proposed and the control algorithm to provide the switching signals using the simple digital logic circuit is also presented in this paper. It is verified from the experiments that the proposed encoder and logic controller can be a powerful candidate a the practical low cost SRM drive.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.73-88
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• 2018

The present study examined how processing features of visual information near the hand would affect task switching. Recent studies reported enhanced cognitive control of visual information presented the near hands. To investigate the enhancement of cognitive control based on the relationship between hand proximity and attention, we implemented 2 experiments. In the task switching performance experiment, the hand proximity effect depended on modality of cue and target. The first experiment showed that stimuli near the hand received greater cognitive control than stimuli far from the hand, resulting in smaller switch cost. The result could rule out the feature-binding problem, which identifies reduced switch cost as the cause instead of hand proximity. Our results show that hand proximity actually reduced switch cost. In the second experiment, we examined the effects of hand nearness, modality, and their interaction on switch cost. In task switching, the target was always visual, and the cue was presented either visually or auditorily. In addition, we manipulated the cue-target interval to observe the preparation effect of cue. The results showed that a visual cue near the hand reduced switch cost by shortening task preparation time. Also, modality switching between an auditory cue and visual target was remarkable in a hand-near condition. The results for the visual cue could be interpreted as a benefit of rapid visual attention orienting. On the other hand, the results for the auditory cue could be interpreted as the cost of interference of modality switching by slower attentional disengagement of stimuli near the hands. Finally, modulation of switch cost by attention induced by hand nearness was discussed.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.87-115
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• 2012

Introduction: In these days, a loyalty program is one of the most common marketing mechanisms (Lacey & Sneath, 2006; Nues & Dreze, 2006; Uncles et al., 20003). In recent years, Coalition Loyalty Program is more noticeable as one of progressed forms. In the past, loyalty program was operating independently by single product brand or single retail channel brand. Now, companies using Coalition Loyalty Program share their programs as one single service and companies to participate to this program continue to have benefits from their existing program as well as positive spillover effect from the other participating network companies. Instead of consumers to earn or spend points from single retail channel or brand, consumers will have more opportunities to utilize their points and be able to purchase other participating companies products. Issues that are related to form of loyalty programs are essentially connected with consumers' perceived view on convenience of using its program. This can be a problem for distribution companies' strategic marketing plan. Although Coalition Loyalty Program is popular corporate marketing strategy to most companies, only few researches have been published. However, compared to independent loyalty program, coalition loyalty program operated by third parties of partnership has following conditions: Companies cannot autonomously modify structures of program for individual companies' benefits, and there is no guarantee to operate and to participate its program continuously by signing a contract. Thus, it is important to conduct the study on how coalition loyalty program affects companies' success and its process as much as conducting the study on effects of independent program. This study will complement the lack of coalition loyalty program study. The purpose of this study is to find out how consumer loyalty affects affiliated brands, its cause and mechanism. The past study about loyalty program only provided the variation of performance analysis, but this study will specifically focus on causes of results. In order to do these, this study is designed and to verify three primary objects as following; First, based on opinions of Switching Barriers (Fornell, 1992; Ping, 1993; Jones, et at., 2000) about causes of loyalty of coalition brand, 'brand attractiveness' and 'brand switching cost' are antecedents and causes of change in 'brand loyalty' will be investigated. Second, influence of consumers' perception and attitude prior to joining coalition loyalty program, influence of program in retail brands, brand attractiveness and spillover effect of switching cost after joining coalition program will be verified. Finally, the study will apply 'prior brand preference' as a variable and will provide a relationship between effects of coalition loyalty program and prior preference level. Hypothesis Hypothesis 1. After joining coalition loyalty program, more preferred brand (compared to less preferred brand) will increase influence on brand attractiveness to brand loyalty. Hypothesis 2. After joining coalition loyalty program, less preferred brand (compared to more preferred brand) will increase influence on brand switching cost to brand loyalty. Hypothesis 3. (1)Brand attractiveness and (2)brand switching cost of more preferred brand (before joining the coalition loyalty program) will influence more positive effects from (1)program attractiveness and (2)program switching cost of coalition loyalty program (after joining) than less preferred brand. Hypothesis 4. After joining coalition loyalty program, (1)brand attractiveness and (2)brand switching cost of more preferred brand will receive more positive impacts from (1)program attractiveness and (2)program switching cost of coalition loyalty program than less preferred brand. Hypothesis 5. After joining coalition loyalty program, (1)brand attractiveness and (2)brand switching cost of more preferred brand will receive less impacts from (1)brand attractiveness and (2)brand switching cost of different brands (having different preference level), which joined simultaneously, than less preferred brand. Method : In order to validate hypotheses, this study will apply experimental method throughout virtual scenario of coalition loyalty program if consumers have used or available for the actual brands. The experiment is conducted twice to participants. In a first experiment, the study will provide six coalition brands which are already selected based on prior research. The survey asked each brand attractiveness, switching cost, and loyalty after they choose high preference brand and low preference brand. One hour break was provided prior to the second experiment. In a second experiment, virtual coalition loyalty program "SaveBag" was introduced to participants. Participants were informed that "SaveBag" will be new alliance with six coalition brands from the first experiment. Brand attractiveness and switching cost about coalition program were measured and brand attractiveness and switching cost of high preference brand and low preference brand were measured as same method of first experiment. Limitation and future research This study shows limitations of effects of coalition loyalty program by using virtual scenario instead of actual research. Thus, future study should compare and analyze CLP panel data to provide more in-depth information. In addition, this study only proved the effectiveness of coalition loyalty program. However, there are two types of loyalty program, which are Single and Coalition, and success of coalition loyalty program will be dependent on market brand power and prior customer attitude. Therefore, it will be interesting to compare effects of two programs in the future.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.10 no.11
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• pp.79-88
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• 2012

Purpose - The objective of this paper is to suggest that a company's CRM activities have an effect on customer loyalty in the Korean retail industry. Typically, Korean customers use large local marts with convenience in the absence of any other choice. Therefore, this study aims to shed light on the fact that customers do not break away from their preferred retail stores, either owing to their stringent loyalty (the lie loyalty) or difficulty in turning to alternative choices. Research design, data, methodology - By surveying a sample of 200 hyper-markets through a questionnaire, and excluding dubious and missing responses, I obtained 181 samples to be included in the empirical analysis. The survey was conducted for two weeks during October 2011. AMOS and SPSS18 statistical packages were used for conducting statistical analysis for this study. This paper was developed using the concept of customer equity on CRM, which is known to have a positive impact on customer loyalty through the satisfaction and switching-barrier parameters. The hypothesis of this paper is that customer equity is composed of relationship equity, value equity and brand equity, and that the relationship equity variable has positive effects on the value equity and brand equity amongst other types of customer equity. Moreover, customer equity influences customer loyalty through parameters including customer satisfaction and switching costs in the Korean retail industry. Results - According to the results of the analysis, it was confirmed that relationship value had a positive effect (+) on all variables, including the perceived QoS (Quality of Service), store brand images, economic value, and store convenience. It was also confirmed that the assumption that the perceived QoS (Quality of Service), economic value, and store convenience had a positive effect on customer satisfaction was shown to be statistically significant, with a p-value below 0.05. Only the store brand value variable had an effect on the switching-cost variable with respect to the causal sequence of the variables, including the perceived QoS, store brand value, economic value, and store convenience. The remaining variables did not seem to influence the switching-cost variable. On the other hand, another effect showed that customer satisfaction had a statistically significant influence on the switching-costs variable. Moreover, the customer satisfaction and switching-cost variables also had a statistical influence on customer loyalty. Conclusions - The CRM activities had an influence on various variables (including perceived QoS, perceived economic value, store brand value, and store convenience) pertaining to customer values. Customer satisfaction and switching-cost had some effects on customer loyalty as a parameter. This confirms that stringent loyalty exists with respect to customer loyalty in the retail industry. The fact that the variable had such a statistically significant influence on the switching-cost and store brand equity variables means that consumers react to the reputation of a brand, confidence about the store, and quality confidence. The implications of this study in the retail industry should be further extended to devise strategies for customer retention.

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.173-190
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• 2016

The purpose of this study was to investigate the mediating roles of relationship quality, satisfaction and trust, and switching cost during the process of the effects of service quality in the beauty industry. Assuming the attractiveness of alternatives of such structural relations may differ between paths of groups, effects of influence on the relation of each composition concept were investigated. This study adopted a three-dimensional model of service quality, "process quality", "outcome quality", and "environment quality." Amos was used to analyze the research hypotheses and the proposed model. The result of the study suggests that service quality positively influences relationship quality, and relationship quality yields service loyalty. The results also indicates that relationship quality positively influences switching cost and switching cost positively influences service loyalty. Each service quality dimension had a significant effect on satisfaction, trust, and the relative importance of service quality dimensions on satisfaction; trust followed the order of process quality, outcome quality, and environment quality. The moderating variable such as the alternatives' attractiveness is found to be important moderators of the path of the model.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.21-43
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• 2013

Internet vendors are gradually realizing the importance of "locking-in" online customers in order to ensure profitability. Erection of switching barriers increases customers'lock-in and in turn may result in their willingness to pay price-premium for the same service. However, raising customer lock-in online is difficult because search costs are very low. Therefore, this study examines the effect of switching barriers (customer satisfaction, perceived value and relative advantage) on switching costs and the effect of switching costs on customer's willingness to pay more. Since switching costs and consequent relationships may depend upon the type of product therefore the research model in this study is examined for both search products and experience products. Data is collected through an online survey from two websites (one each for search product and experience product). The empirical results show the key role of switching costs in customers' willingness to pay more and the relationships among the four constructs. The theoretical and practical implications of this study are also discussed.