• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.143-164
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• 2010

Although word-of-mouth (WOM) has been regarded as one of the very important topics in consumer research, its effects on other aspects of consumer behavior have been scarcely investigated in the context of health-care service industry. The WOM literature also suggests that it is essential for medical care service organizations in fierce competition to adopt WOM communication as a competitive weapon so as to be able to stay ahead of competition. The goal of this research was set to empirically study various relationships between antecedent variables, WOM acceptance, and purchase of medical care services. Specifically, drawing on the WOM literature, eight antecedents to WOM acceptance were selected first. Based on the relevant literature, seven sets of hypotheses on the relationships among antecedents to WOM, WOM acceptance, purchase intention and purchase of medical services were developed. Data were collected via an on-line survey. A total of 571 out of 600 responses turned out to be usable. The major findings of this study can be summarized as follows: First, 6 out of 8 antecedent variables to WOM acceptance were found to be positively affect WOM acceptance. However, the effects of (1) "newness of technology" pertaining to medical care service characteristics and (2) "involvement in health", one of receiver characteristics, were found to be insignificant. Second, most moderating effects on the relationship between purchase and purchase intention of medical care services were found to be insignificant with one exception. That is, elapse of time was found to be a marginally significant moderator on the relationship between purchase and purchase intention of medical care services. Third, it was found that the higher the WOM acceptance, the higher the purchase intention of medical care services. Finally, the effect of WOM acceptance was found to be particularly strong when WOM contents were perceived as useful and positive. Overall, it seems essential for hospitals to actively adopt WOM communication as a competitive marketing tool if they plan to improve their business performance. In this respect, the current study may serve to improve the business performance of hospitals by way of providing theoretical and empirical evidence on the effects of WOM communication variables on WOM acceptance and medical care service purchase.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.185-206
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• 2011

"Does CRM benefit affect repurchase or WOM? What is difference between VIP customers and non-VIP customers on CRM benefit?" is the interesting issue on premium industry such as a hotel business. This study examines how social benefit, psychological benefits, economic benefits and customization benefits affect repurchase and positive WOM in premium hotel. Only three of the four benefits showed significant results in repurchase and positive WOM. Also interactions between customer type and benefits were different in repurchase and WOM. The results figure out that VIP customers depend on psychological benefits and customization benefits on repurchase, whereas VIP customers depend on only social benefit on WOM. This finding suggests that hotels need to develop VIP program and approach differently to increase the repurchase volume or positive WOM effect.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.15 no.9
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• pp.85-93
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• 2017

Purpose - The volume and valence of online word-of-mouth(eWOM) have become an important part of the retailer's market success for a wide range of products. This study aims to investigate how the growth of eWOM has generated the product's final financial outcomes in the introductory period influences. Research design, data, and methodology - This study uses weekly box office performance for 117 movies released in the South Korea from July 2015 to June 2016 using Korean Film Council(KOFIC) database. 292,371 posted online review messages were collected from NAVER movie review bulletin board. Using regression analysis, we test whether eWOM incurred during the opening week is valuable to explain the last of box office performance. Three major eWOM metrics were considered after controlling for the major distributional factors. Results - Results support that major eWOM variables play a significant role in box-office outcome prediction. Especially, the growth rate of the positive eWOM volume has a significant effect on the growth potential in sales. Conclusions - The findings highlight that the speed of eWOM growth has an informational value to understand the market reaction to a new product beyond valence and volume. Movie distributors need to take positive online eWOM growth into account to make optimal screen allocation decisions after release.

• The Korean Journal of Food And Nutrition
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.217-225
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• 2011

The current research identified the impacts of WOM(Word-of-Mouth) regarding dining experience and the factors which were likely to influence them. Specifically, this study is examined from the perspective of WOM recipient's in on-line settings. For the purpose of this research, online survey was used and a total 203 online questionnaires of respondents who had experienced restaurant reviews and recommendations via internet last 6 month were analyzed. Overall, the results indicated that in aspects of WOM recipients, the impacts of WOM were 'visit intention', 're-WOM intention' and 'source credibility' affected 'WOM acceptance' in this process. Additionally, 'online homophily' and 'message vividness' had a positive effects(p<0.001) on builiding source credibility. By clarifying the process between on-line WOM of restaurant consumers and their actual visit, this study intend to provide basis which can be used for restaurant industry's effective marketing activity.

• Culinary science and hospitality research
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.302-318
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• 2016

The purpose of this study was to verify the effects of benefit sought of food products on SNS-WOM information characteristics, purchase intention, and SNS-WOM with regards to food products. In addition, the mediating role of SNS-WOM information characteristics was also examined. A survey was conducted from March 10th to 30th using an SNS based convenience sampling method. A total of 350 responses were collected, of which 326 were used for analysis, after excluding responses containing missing data. Multiple regression and hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to verify the hypotheses. The results from this study are as follows. First, it was found that diversity and utilitarian benefits of food products had a greater effect on consensus of SNS than the symbolic and experimental benefits. However, symbolic and experimental benefits of food products had a greater effect on neutrality of SNS than the diversity and utilitarian benefits. Second, only consensus of SNS-WOM information characteristics significantly impacted purchase intention of food products. Third, consensus of SNS-WOM information characteristics had a greater effect on SNS-WOM intention of food products than the neutrality of SNS-WOM information characteristics. Fourth, SNS-WOM information characteristics were found to mediate the relationship between benefit sought and purchase intention of food products. Fifth, SNS-WOM information characteristics were found to mediate the relationship between benefit sought and SNS-WOM intention of food products.

• The Journal of Economics, Marketing and Management
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• v.11 no.5
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• pp.29-44
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• 2023

Purpose: This study analyzed the effect of the perceived value of the OTT platform on consumers' technology acceptance, continuous use intention, and WOM using the Expanded TAM. Research design, data and methodology: A survey was conducted targeting OTT platform users in their 20s to 40s nationwide from August 10 to 16, 2022, and a total of 208 people were used in the final analysis. To verify the research model, frequency analysis, CFA, and SEM analysis were performed using SPSS and AMOS. Results: First, the perceived value of the OTT platform was found to have a positive effect on consumers' technology acceptance (perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and perceived enjoyment). Second, the perceived ease of use of OTT platform consumers was found to have a positive effect on perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment. Third, it was found that the perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment of OTT platform consumers had a positive effect on the continuous use intention, and WOM. Fourth, it was found that the continuous use intention the OTT platform had a positive effect on the WOM. Conclusions: Word of mouth and continuous use of existing customers are important for OTT platform companies to retain existing customers and secure new customers. Through the perceived value of the OTT platform, efforts should be made to provide various contents that consumers can enjoy along with usefulness and convenience of functions.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aviation and Aeronautics
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.39-47
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• 2017

The ultimate aim of this research is to analyze the effects of on-line word of mouth (WOM) regarding airlines on behavior intention of airline passengers through information accommodation, attitude and trust. For the purpose, we have carried out a questionnaire survey with passengers who have used airline social media and websites as target, and analyzed a total of 362 copies of the questionnaire using structural equation. As a result of analysis, on-line WOM turned out to have a significant effect on accommodation, and the accommodation turned out to have significant effects on attitude and trust. Also, attitude turned out to have a significant effect on trust, and the trust turned out to have a significant effect on behavior intention. This research has significance in that it can help establish a WOM marketing strategy of airlines through grasping the actual situation of on-line WOM of airlines and present a possibility of WOM marketing utilizing social media as an appropriate marketing for aviation industry. At the same time, it also has an academic significance in that it predicted actual behavior intention of passengers who have used on-line WOM on airlines.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.159-176
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• 2015

As a public medium and one of the big data sources that is accumulated informally and real time, online news comments or replies are considered a significant resource to understand mentalities of article readers. The comments are also being regarded as an important medium of WOM (Word of Mouse) about products, services or the enterprises. If the diffusing effect of the comments is referred to as the degrees of agreement and disagreement from an angle of WOM, figuring out which characteristics of the comments would influence the agreements or the disagreements to the comments in very early stage would be very worthwhile to establish a comment-based eWOM (electronic WOM) strategy. However, investigating the effects of the characteristics of the comments on eWOM effect has been rarely studied. According to this angle, this study aims to conduct an empirical analysis which understands the characteristics of comments that affect the numbers of agreement and disagreement, as eWOM performance, to particular news articles which address a specific product, service or enterprise per se. While extant literature has focused on the quantitative attributes of the comments which are collected by manually, this paper used text mining techniques to acquire the qualitative attributes of the comments in an automatic and cost effective manner.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.73-98
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• 2019

As information and communication technology continue its remarkable development, the exchange of information online becomes as prevalent and frequent as face-to-face communication in daily life. Therefore, the management and application of WOM (word of mouth) practices will become more important than ever to companies. Currently, there are various types of communication channels for online WOM, and each channel has its own unique traits. Most of the previous research studies online WOM by examining the information inside a single communication channel, but this research chooses two different communication channels and analyzes the effects of online WOM with each channel's unique characteristics. More specifically, this research focuses on the expectation that the effects of information from Twitter and blogs on product sales may differ because Twitter and blogs, two different communication channels for online WOM, have their own unique traits. Our particular aim is to perform an in-depth examination on the effects of communication channel's volume and valence on product sales, two important attributes of online WOM. Furthermore, while most of the empirical research focuses on online WOM and analyzes its effect on markets of temporary experience goods, such as movies and books, this research highlights focuses on the automobile market, a durable goods market. The results of our analysis are as follows: First, regarding blogs, a positive valence significantly and positively affects the sales of products, and this result indicates that consumers are influenced more by the emotional aspect of a product presented in a post than by the number of blog posts. Second, regarding Twitter, the volume of online WOM significantly and positively affects sales, an indication that as the number of posts increase, the sales increase. Through this research, we suggest that even those firms that sell durable goods can increase sales through the management and application of online WOM. Moreover, according to the characteristics of communication channels, the effects of online WOM on sales differ. As a practical implication of this research, we suggest that companies can and should create marketing strategies appropriate to their targeted communication channels.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.65-83
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• 2017

Word-of-mouth (WOM), the communication between consumers offline, has transformed to include electronic word-of-mouth(eWOM), which has grown in its influence due to the advancements in communication technology. Despite the fact that many researchers have studied the impact of WOM and eWOM on the performance of movies in the movie industry, there still exists much controversy. Therefore, this study investigates the relationship of eWOM's volume and valence with the box office revenue for 2 years in Korean movies industry. The results show that the volume of eWOM, which is expected to related to awareness diffusion, is more important than the valence in the early stage of movie release. And in the later stage, the valence of eWOM which is expected to related to persuasion effect influences the box office revenue. In addition, the relationship of the volume and valence on box office revenue in both early and later stage can be increased through the interaction with the star power which raises the familiarity or the movie genre which causes the high arousal.