• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.97-114
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• 2012

Given the rapid growth of social network services (SNS) such as Facebook and Cyworld, it is important to understand SNS users' decision-making processes such as purchasing and continuance intention. Especially, as a number of SNS providers such as Cyworld and Habbo Hotel recognize the sales of digital items as the main source of their profits, it is critical to in-depth understand SNS users' purchasing behaviors. In this regard, this study explores continued usage behaviors and purchase behaviors of digital items in an SNS environment using a longitudinal research method. This paper develops a theoretical model to deeply understand the key drivers of purchase behavior of digital items through constructs prescribed by two established research streams on information systems, namely continuance usage and habitual usage. Moreover, this study examines the effects of actual and ideal self-image congruity on SNS continuance intention and habit. The research model was tested by using survey data collected from 307 users who have experience with Cyworld. The analysis results show that SNS actual usage directly influence purchase behavior of digital items. SNS users' continuance intention and habit are key drivers to enhance the level of actual usage of the SNS. Both actual and ideal self-image congruity play a key role in enhancing continuance usage and habitual usage. The implication of research and discussions provides reference for SNS providers in marketing and IT strategy.

• Journal of Korea Society of Digital Industry and Information Management
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.181-192
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• 2015

A new communication revolution such as social networking service (SNS) has been transforming the way of interaction between people in both of individual level and organizational level. Recently many people have switched to closed type SNS such as Naver Band and Kakao group due to the several reasons. The purpose of this study is to investigate the usage motivation and satisfaction of SNS based on use and gratifications perspectives. Based on prior studies on use and gratifications of Internet-related media and SNS, information motivation, relationship motivation, pleasure/entertainment motivation, self-expression motivation, work motivation were identified as usage motivation of SNS. This empirical study explores how these motivations vary between open type SNS(facebook and twitter) and closed type SNS(band and kakao group). This study contributes to provide the base of activation strategies and practical implications for companies using SNS as a marketing tool.

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.1-25
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• 2015

Social Network Service (SNS) has been played an important role in the life with the expansion of the modern technology in the cellular communication. More knowledge and understanding should be inevitable even if companies have taken advantage of SNS through word of mouth as one of the new paradigm. In most cases the crucial benefit or peculiarity of SNS has been overlooked because only general aspects of SNS have been applied in the online situation. As a result of this, same paradigm has been considered in reality as SNS was just used one of the marketing tools. However, essential aspects of SNS were investigated to see the relation of usage intention and word of mouth in this study. The hypothesis of the effect of continuous intention of the usage, trust and word of mouth was made and reviewed statistically. The statistical analysis showed there was significant among relationship, context, perceived service quality and continuous intention of the usage. In addition to that, self-expression, relationship, perceived service quality and trust were significant. Finally the continuous intention of the usage and word of mouth was significant as well. Based on this study, SNS provided by the companies could be effective to the customers in terms of word of mouth while different trend was shown in terms of trust.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.469-480
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• 2020

The study investigated the effects of SNS usage on 20s and 30s female SNS users' internalization of thin body, body surveillance, appearance upper comparison, body dissatisfaction and eating disorders based on objectification theory and social comparison theory. The study examined differences on SNS usage and body image variables between high and low groups of SNS envy and self-compassion. Social Network Service (SNS) is used as a contemporary marketing tool for brands and companies. It also influences the body image of female SNS users. The survey used an online survey company for female SNS users in their 20s and 30s to analyze the effect of SNS usage. The results showed that SNS usage significantly impacted the internalization of a thin body, body surveillance and appearance upper comparison. The internalization of thin body also had a significant impact on body surveillance and appearance upper comparison. Appearance upper comparison positively affected body dissatisfaction and eating disorders. Finally, the group with higher SNS envy showed higher SNS usage, internalization of thin body, body surveillance, appearance upper comparison, body dissatisfaction and eating disorders. The group with higher self-compassion showed opposite results. This study provided a theoretical expansion for a SNS and female body image study with objectification theory and social comparison theory. It also suggests positive SNS marketing strategies use for brands. Lastly, this study emphasized the importance of the proper use of SNS to protect the body image of SNS users.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.15 no.12
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• pp.147-158
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to investigate the determinants of the SNS usage time depending on SNS motive of the youth workers. Although previous studies revealed that there are many motivations for SNS usage, it is not known which factors determine usage time of each SNS motive. In this study, we constructed the unbalanced panel data of the Korean Education & Employment Panel data. Among three different SNS motives such as information exchange, social networking, and fun pursuit, gender, physical health, extraversion, and conscientiousness affected the usage of SNS when the motivation was information exchange. When it was personal connection, the size of organization, education, physical health, subjective happiness, job satisfaction, neuroticism, and agreeableness did. When it was fun & interest, foreign company, status of children, subjective happiness, and job satisfaction did. Based on the findings, we discussed theoretical and practical implications.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.207-224
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• 2016

Investments in information and communication technologies (ICT) around the world have grown at an enormous rate over the past two decades, which reflects a new emphasis on consumer mobile devices. A social network service (SNS) is an online service that aims to build social relations among people who share interests and activities. The role of SNS is enormous for communicating ideas and opinions among social participants. The use of SNS has recently become one of the most popular social activities worldwide. This research investigated relation between personal characteristics, social characteristics and user satisfaction on SNS then, analyzed how these factors affecting continuance usage intention on SNS users. The conclusion is summarized as below. The study results show that informativeness, pleasure, innovativeness, relationship and empathy of SNS are having positive impact to some degree on the user satisfaction. Further, the user satisfaction of SNS users and quality of life have a positive impact on the continuance usage intention of SNS users. This results show that various SNS qualities are necessary to actively explore and obtain further information that users intend to find, while they are insufficient in function to provide the information other users require or exchange information with other users through the SNS.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.87-100
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• 2023

This study aimed to check the role of SNS upward comparison and SNS usage motivation in the effect of contingent self-esteem on inferiority feelings by verifying the link between each variable in young adults. Depending on passed studies, a study model for the relationship of each variable was founded and the moderated mediation effect was checked. We performed a survey on 400 young adults using SNS through an online survey, and finally, a total of 351 data were employed for analysis. The outcome of the analysis was as follows. First, contingent self-esteem, SNS upward comparison, SNS usage motivation, and inferiority feelings were all affirmed to reveal a positive correlation. Second, contingent self-esteem had an important impact on inferiority feelings, which was mediated by SNS upward comparison. Third, the relationship between SNS upward comparison and inferiority feelings was moderated by SNS usage motivation. Finally, SNS usage motivation moderated the indirect effect of contingent self-esteem on inferiority feelings via SNS upward comparison. Based on the results of this study, we presented the psychological and emotional implications that can experience the inferiority feelings in young adults.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.143-170
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• 2015

In the rapidly changing business environment, companies are introducing information technology to effectively manage internal resources in order to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. We presented the Enterprise Social Network Service(SNS) as new information technology. Enterprise SNS provided employers with sociable functions like Facebook while supporting general task such as mail, authorization and notice. In this research, we focused on Enterprise SNS and suggested self-disclosure, enjoyment in helping others, perceived organizational support, generativity capacity as antecedent variables of Enterprise SNS usage. In addition, we verified the effect of the mediating role of generativity capacity between Enterprise SNS usage and job performance. For empirically verifying the proposed model, we collected sample data from 225 workers using Enterprise SNS and conducted analysis using a structural equation modeling. We expect that this study provides managers who are interested in introducing enterprise SNS with insights on how to facilitate enterprise SNS usage. Also, this study suggests useful theoretical implications to researchers who are interested in the use of enterprise SNS from the context of knowledge management.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.393-417
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• 2022

The current study analyzes the usage of social network services(SNS) according to one's collectivistic and individualistic tendency and the relationship with addiction. Additionally, the study attempted to controll intrapersonal variables such as gender, personalitly, and age, which affect SNS the usage. Also, Collectivistic-individualistic tendency in SNS and offline environment may not correspond to one another. Therefore, the study measured the collectivistic-individualistic tendency regarding of the two environment separately. For this purpose, we designed a new measurement scale to measure collectivistic-individualistic tendencies in for the SNS by involving a kin vs nonkin context. The sample consisted of 253 adolescents ranging from 13 to 15 years old and 246 adults ranging from 18 to 25 years old, which sums up to 499 samples in total. Results indicated that individualistic tendency within SNS showed a positive relationship with the amount of SNS usage and SNS addiction. Furthermore, female users spent more time on SNS and showed a higher level addiction than males. While adults had longer experience with SNS and spent more time on it daily than adolescents, they did not show a significant difference in regards to SNS addiction. The correlation analysis indicated that collectivistic-individualistic tendencies in SNS were weakly correlated to that of offline environments. The kin individualistic tendency in SNS significantly predicted SNS addiction after controlling for the effect of age, personality, gender, and offline collectivistic-individualistic tendency. Taken together, these findings indicate the need for an appropriate collectivistic-individualist tendency scale that correspond to the SNS context. The results also suggest that kin individualistic tendency in the SNS environment can be the main factor for SNS addiction.

• Journal of Korea Society of Digital Industry and Information Management
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.237-249
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• 2014

The technological advances within the Internet industry have led to a revolution in terms of how people communicate with each other. For example, users are no longer limited to using face to face interactions to connect and communicate with their peers but can use email, instant messaging and more. A recent trend that researchers are observing is the adaption of SNS. SNS such as facebook and myspace has been a dominant global trend and has grown dramatically in the past 5 years. The purpose of this study was to test SNS usage motivations influencing the user satisfaction. The research model was developed based on literature review. SNS usage motivations consist of five factors: expression, relationship formation, social exchange, information seeking, trend. 189 questionnaires were used for the main part of regression analysis. The analysis results revealed that relationship formation, social exchange and information seeking were very significant factors influencing the user satisfaction. Especially, social exchange was the most significant factor. We can prospect that importance of user satisfaction on SNS usage motivations is more and more increasing in the future.