• Title/Summary/Keyword: Website

Search Result 1,435, Processing Time 0.027 seconds

Customers' Needs Analysis for Distribution and Utilization of Plant Genetic Resources in RDA-Genebank (농업유전자원은행의 식물유전자원 분양 활용에 대한 수요자 요구도 분석)

  • Kim, Chang-Yung;Cho, Gyu-Taek;Baek, Hyung-Jin;Lee, Sok-Young;Lee, Myung-Chul;Lee, Young-Yi;Choi, Yu-Mi
    • Korean Journal of Plant Resources
    • /
    • v.26 no.2
    • /
    • pp.328-335
    • /
    • 2013
  • The National Agrobiodiversity Center is the nodal agency assigned as the National Agricultural Genebank of the Rural Development Administration. Its main role is to collect, conserve, evaluate and distribute plant genetic resources. As of 2010, NAC has distributed a total of 380,981 accessions in the last 20 years (1991-2010) or an average of about 19,000 accessions per year. To meet customers' demands for germplasm and derive quality improvements, a mail survey in 2011 was conducted among the genetic resource users in 2010. Most of the clients obtained information on the germplasm conserved in the national genebank from the NAC website or NAC staff, and they sought specific traits in the samples. Most users received the materials within 15 days, and wanted useful data together with genetic resource. Korean landrace was the most frequently requested accessions. According to the survey results, it is supposed that useful genetic resources should be preferentially collected and their characterization/evaluation should be strengthened to enhance the utilization of genetic resources.

The Smartphone User's Dilemma among Personalization, Privacy, and Advertisement Fatigue: An Empirical Examination of Personalized Smartphone Advertisement (스마트폰 이용자의 모바일 광고 수용의사에 영향을 주는 요인: 개인화된 서비스, 개인정보보호, 광고 피로도 사이에서의 딜레마)

  • You, Soeun;Kim, Taeha;Cha, Hoon S.
    • Information Systems Review
    • /
    • v.17 no.2
    • /
    • pp.77-100
    • /
    • 2015
  • This study examined the factors that influence the smartphone user's decision to accept the personalized mobile advertisement. As a theoretical basis, we applied the privacy calculus model (PCM) that illustrates how consumers are engaged in a dynamic adjustment process in which privacy risks are weighted against benefits of information disclosure. In particular, we investigated how smartphone users make a risk-benefit assessment under which personalized service as benefit-side factor and information privacy risks as a risk-side factor accompanying their acceptance of advertisements. Further, we extend the current PCM by considering advertisement fatigue as a new factor that may influence the user's acceptance. The research model with five (5) hypotheses was tested using data gathered from 215 respondents through a quasi-experimental survey method. During the survey, each participant was asked to navigate the website where the experimental simulation of a mobile advertisement service was provided. The results showed that three (3) out of five (5) hypotheses were supported. First, we found that the intention to accept advertisements is positively and significantly influenced by the perceived value of personalization. Second, perceived advertisement fatigue was also found to be a strong predictor of the intention to accept advertisements. However, we did not find any evidence of direct influence of privacy risks. Finally, we found that the significant moderating effect between the perceived value of personalization and advertisement fatigue. This suggests that the firms should provide effective tailored advertisement that can increase the perceived value of personalization to mitigate the negative impacts of advertisement fatigue.

The Effects of Sentiment and Readability on Useful Votes for Customer Reviews with Count Type Review Usefulness Index (온라인 리뷰의 감성과 독해 용이성이 리뷰 유용성에 미치는 영향: 가산형 리뷰 유용성 정보 활용)

  • Cruz, Ruth Angelie;Lee, Hong Joo
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
    • /
    • v.22 no.1
    • /
    • pp.43-61
    • /
    • 2016
  • Customer reviews help potential customers make purchasing decisions. However, the prevalence of reviews on websites push the customer to sift through them and change the focus from a mere search to identifying which of the available reviews are valuable and useful for the purchasing decision at hand. To identify useful reviews, websites have developed different mechanisms to give customers options when evaluating existing reviews. Websites allow users to rate the usefulness of a customer review as helpful or not. Amazon.com uses a ratio-type helpfulness, while Yelp.com uses a count-type usefulness index. This usefulness index provides helpful reviews to future potential purchasers. This study investigated the effects of sentiment and readability on useful votes for customer reviews. Similar studies on the relationship between sentiment and readability have focused on the ratio-type usefulness index utilized by websites such as Amazon.com. In this study, Yelp.com's count-type usefulness index for restaurant reviews was used to investigate the relationship between sentiment/readability and usefulness votes. Yelp.com's online customer reviews for stores in the beverage and food categories were used for the analysis. In total, 170,294 reviews containing information on a store's reputation and popularity were used. The control variables were the review length, store reputation, and popularity; the independent variables were the sentiment and readability, while the dependent variable was the number of helpful votes. The review rating is the moderating variable for the review sentiment and readability. The length is the number of characters in a review. The popularity is the number of reviews for a store, and the reputation is the general average rating of all reviews for a store. The readability of a review was calculated with the Coleman-Liau index. The sentiment is a positivity score for the review as calculated by SentiWordNet. The review rating is a preference score selected from 1 to 5 (stars) by the review author. The dependent variable (i.e., usefulness votes) used in this study is a count variable. Therefore, the Poisson regression model, which is commonly used to account for the discrete and nonnegative nature of count data, was applied in the analyses. The increase in helpful votes was assumed to follow a Poisson distribution. Because the Poisson model assumes an equal mean and variance and the data were over-dispersed, a negative binomial distribution model that allows for over-dispersion of the count variable was used for the estimation. Zero-inflated negative binomial regression was used to model count variables with excessive zeros and over-dispersed count outcome variables. With this model, the excess zeros were assumed to be generated through a separate process from the count values and therefore should be modeled as independently as possible. The results showed that positive sentiment had a negative effect on gaining useful votes for positive reviews but no significant effect on negative reviews. Poor readability had a negative effect on gaining useful votes and was not moderated by the review star ratings. These findings yield considerable managerial implications. The results are helpful for online websites when analyzing their review guidelines and identifying useful reviews for their business. Based on this study, positive reviews are not necessarily helpful; therefore, restaurants should consider which type of positive review is helpful for their business. Second, this study is beneficial for businesses and website designers in creating review mechanisms to know which type of reviews to highlight on their websites and which type of reviews can be beneficial to the business. Moreover, this study highlights the review systems employed by websites to allow their customers to post rating reviews.

Enhancing Predictive Accuracy of Collaborative Filtering Algorithms using the Network Analysis of Trust Relationship among Users (사용자 간 신뢰관계 네트워크 분석을 활용한 협업 필터링 알고리즘의 예측 정확도 개선)

  • Choi, Seulbi;Kwahk, Kee-Young;Ahn, Hyunchul
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
    • /
    • v.22 no.3
    • /
    • pp.113-127
    • /
    • 2016
  • Among the techniques for recommendation, collaborative filtering (CF) is commonly recognized to be the most effective for implementing recommender systems. Until now, CF has been popularly studied and adopted in both academic and real-world applications. The basic idea of CF is to create recommendation results by finding correlations between users of a recommendation system. CF system compares users based on how similar they are, and recommend products to users by using other like-minded people's results of evaluation for each product. Thus, it is very important to compute evaluation similarities among users in CF because the recommendation quality depends on it. Typical CF uses user's explicit numeric ratings of items (i.e. quantitative information) when computing the similarities among users in CF. In other words, user's numeric ratings have been a sole source of user preference information in traditional CF. However, user ratings are unable to fully reflect user's actual preferences from time to time. According to several studies, users may more actively accommodate recommendation of reliable others when purchasing goods. Thus, trust relationship can be regarded as the informative source for identifying user's preference with accuracy. Under this background, we propose a new hybrid recommender system that fuses CF and social network analysis (SNA). The proposed system adopts the recommendation algorithm that additionally reflect the result analyzed by SNA. In detail, our proposed system is based on conventional memory-based CF, but it is designed to use both user's numeric ratings and trust relationship information between users when calculating user similarities. For this, our system creates and uses not only user-item rating matrix, but also user-to-user trust network. As the methods for calculating user similarity between users, we proposed two alternatives - one is algorithm calculating the degree of similarity between users by utilizing in-degree and out-degree centrality, which are the indices representing the central location in the social network. We named these approaches as 'Trust CF - All' and 'Trust CF - Conditional'. The other alternative is the algorithm reflecting a neighbor's score higher when a target user trusts the neighbor directly or indirectly. The direct or indirect trust relationship can be identified by searching trust network of users. In this study, we call this approach 'Trust CF - Search'. To validate the applicability of the proposed system, we used experimental data provided by LibRec that crawled from the entire FilmTrust website. It consists of ratings of movies and trust relationship network indicating who to trust between users. The experimental system was implemented using Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) and UCINET 6. To examine the effectiveness of the proposed system, we compared the performance of our proposed method with one of conventional CF system. The performances of recommender system were evaluated by using average MAE (mean absolute error). The analysis results confirmed that in case of applying without conditions the in-degree centrality index of trusted network of users(i.e. Trust CF - All), the accuracy (MAE = 0.565134) was lower than conventional CF (MAE = 0.564966). And, in case of applying the in-degree centrality index only to the users with the out-degree centrality above a certain threshold value(i.e. Trust CF - Conditional), the proposed system improved the accuracy a little (MAE = 0.564909) compared to traditional CF. However, the algorithm searching based on the trusted network of users (i.e. Trust CF - Search) was found to show the best performance (MAE = 0.564846). And the result from paired samples t-test presented that Trust CF - Search outperformed conventional CF with 10% statistical significance level. Our study sheds a light on the application of user's trust relationship network information for facilitating electronic commerce by recommending proper items to users.

A Study on Analyzing Sentiments on Movie Reviews by Multi-Level Sentiment Classifier (영화 리뷰 감성분석을 위한 텍스트 마이닝 기반 감성 분류기 구축)

  • Kim, Yuyoung;Song, Min
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
    • /
    • v.22 no.3
    • /
    • pp.71-89
    • /
    • 2016
  • Sentiment analysis is used for identifying emotions or sentiments embedded in the user generated data such as customer reviews from blogs, social network services, and so on. Various research fields such as computer science and business management can take advantage of this feature to analyze customer-generated opinions. In previous studies, the star rating of a review is regarded as the same as sentiment embedded in the text. However, it does not always correspond to the sentiment polarity. Due to this supposition, previous studies have some limitations in their accuracy. To solve this issue, the present study uses a supervised sentiment classification model to measure a more accurate sentiment polarity. This study aims to propose an advanced sentiment classifier and to discover the correlation between movie reviews and box-office success. The advanced sentiment classifier is based on two supervised machine learning techniques, the Support Vector Machines (SVM) and Feedforward Neural Network (FNN). The sentiment scores of the movie reviews are measured by the sentiment classifier and are analyzed by statistical correlations between movie reviews and box-office success. Movie reviews are collected along with a star-rate. The dataset used in this study consists of 1,258,538 reviews from 175 films gathered from Naver Movie website (movie.naver.com). The results show that the proposed sentiment classifier outperforms Naive Bayes (NB) classifier as its accuracy is about 6% higher than NB. Furthermore, the results indicate that there are positive correlations between the star-rate and the number of audiences, which can be regarded as the box-office success of a movie. The study also shows that there is the mild, positive correlation between the sentiment scores estimated by the classifier and the number of audiences. To verify the applicability of the sentiment scores, an independent sample t-test was conducted. For this, the movies were divided into two groups using the average of sentiment scores. The two groups are significantly different in terms of the star-rated scores.

The Adoption and Diffusion of Semantic Web Technology Innovation: Qualitative Research Approach (시맨틱 웹 기술혁신의 채택과 확산: 질적연구접근법)

  • Joo, Jae-Hun
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
    • /
    • v.19 no.1
    • /
    • pp.33-62
    • /
    • 2009
  • Internet computing is a disruptive IT innovation. Semantic Web can be considered as an IT innovation because the Semantic Web technology possesses the potential to reduce information overload and enable semantic integration, using capabilities such as semantics and machine-processability. How should organizations adopt the Semantic Web? What factors affect the adoption and diffusion of Semantic Web innovation? Most studies on adoption and diffusion of innovation use empirical analysis as a quantitative research methodology in the post-implementation stage. There is criticism that the positivist requiring theoretical rigor can sacrifice relevance to practice. Rapid advances in technology require studies relevant to practice. In particular, it is realistically impossible to conduct quantitative approach for factors affecting adoption of the Semantic Web because the Semantic Web is in its infancy. However, in an early stage of introduction of the Semantic Web, it is necessary to give a model and some guidelines and for adoption and diffusion of the technology innovation to practitioners and researchers. Thus, the purpose of this study is to present a model of adoption and diffusion of the Semantic Web and to offer propositions as guidelines for successful adoption through a qualitative research method including multiple case studies and in-depth interviews. The researcher conducted interviews with 15 people based on face-to face and 2 interviews by telephone and e-mail to collect data to saturate the categories. Nine interviews including 2 telephone interviews were from nine user organizations adopting the technology innovation and the others were from three supply organizations. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data. The interviews were recorded on digital voice recorder memory and subsequently transcribed verbatim. 196 pages of transcripts were obtained from about 12 hours interviews. Triangulation of evidence was achieved by examining each organization website and various documents, such as brochures and white papers. The researcher read the transcripts several times and underlined core words, phrases, or sentences. Then, data analysis used the procedure of open coding, in which the researcher forms initial categories of information about the phenomenon being studied by segmenting information. QSR NVivo version 8.0 was used to categorize sentences including similar concepts. 47 categories derived from interview data were grouped into 21 categories from which six factors were named. Five factors affecting adoption of the Semantic Web were identified. The first factor is demand pull including requirements for improving search and integration services of the existing systems and for creating new services. Second, environmental conduciveness, reference models, uncertainty, technology maturity, potential business value, government sponsorship programs, promising prospects for technology demand, complexity and trialability affect the adoption of the Semantic Web from the perspective of technology push. Third, absorptive capacity is an important role of the adoption. Fourth, suppler's competence includes communication with and training for users, and absorptive capacity of supply organization. Fifth, over-expectance which results in the gap between user's expectation level and perceived benefits has a negative impact on the adoption of the Semantic Web. Finally, the factor including critical mass of ontology, budget. visible effects is identified as a determinant affecting routinization and infusion. The researcher suggested a model of adoption and diffusion of the Semantic Web, representing relationships between six factors and adoption/diffusion as dependent variables. Six propositions are derived from the adoption/diffusion model to offer some guidelines to practitioners and a research model to further studies. Proposition 1 : Demand pull has an influence on the adoption of the Semantic Web. Proposition 1-1 : The stronger the degree of requirements for improving existing services, the more successfully the Semantic Web is adopted. Proposition 1-2 : The stronger the degree of requirements for new services, the more successfully the Semantic Web is adopted. Proposition 2 : Technology push has an influence on the adoption of the Semantic Web. Proposition 2-1 : From the perceptive of user organizations, the technology push forces such as environmental conduciveness, reference models, potential business value, and government sponsorship programs have a positive impact on the adoption of the Semantic Web while uncertainty and lower technology maturity have a negative impact on its adoption. Proposition 2-2 : From the perceptive of suppliers, the technology push forces such as environmental conduciveness, reference models, potential business value, government sponsorship programs, and promising prospects for technology demand have a positive impact on the adoption of the Semantic Web while uncertainty, lower technology maturity, complexity and lower trialability have a negative impact on its adoption. Proposition 3 : The absorptive capacities such as organizational formal support systems, officer's or manager's competency analyzing technology characteristics, their passion or willingness, and top management support are positively associated with successful adoption of the Semantic Web innovation from the perceptive of user organizations. Proposition 4 : Supplier's competence has a positive impact on the absorptive capacities of user organizations and technology push forces. Proposition 5 : The greater the gap of expectation between users and suppliers, the later the Semantic Web is adopted. Proposition 6 : The post-adoption activities such as budget allocation, reaching critical mass, and sharing ontology to offer sustainable services are positively associated with successful routinization and infusion of the Semantic Web innovation from the perceptive of user organizations.

Consumers Perceptions on Monosodium L-glutamate in Social Media (소셜미디어 분석을 통한 소비자들의 L-글루타민산나트륨에 대한 인식 조사)

  • Lee, Sooyeon;Lee, Wonsung;Moon, Il-Chul;Kwon, Hoonjeong
    • Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
    • /
    • v.31 no.3
    • /
    • pp.153-166
    • /
    • 2016
  • The purpose of this study was to investigate consumers' perceptions on monosodium L-glutamate (MSG) in social media. Data were collected from Naver blogs and Naver web communities (Korean representative portal web-site), and media reports including comment sections on a Yonhap news website (Korean largest news agency). The results from Naver blogs and Naver web communities showed that it was primarily mentioned MSG-use restaurant reviews, 'MSG-no added' products, its safety, and methods of reducing MSG in food. When TV shows on current affairs, newspaper, or TV news reported uses and side effects of MSG, search volume for MSG has increased in both PC and mobile search engines. Search volume has increased especially when TV shows on current affairs reported it. There are more periods with increased search volume for Mobile than PC. Also, it was mainly commented about safety of MSG, criticism of low-quality foods, abuse of MSG, and distrust of government below the news on the Yonhap news site. The label of MSG-no added products in market emphasized "MSG-free" even though it is allocated as an acceptable daily intake (ADI) not-specified by the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA). When consumers search for MSG (monosodium L-glutamate) or purchase food on market, they might perceive that 'MSG-no added' products are better. Competent authorities, offices of education and local government provide guidelines based on no added MSG principle and these policies might affect consumers' perceptions. TV program or news program could be a powerful and effective consumer communication channel about MSG through Mobile rather than PC. Therefore media including TV should report item on monosodium L-glutamate with responsibility and information based on scientific background for consumers to get reliable information.

Factors Influencing the Adoption of Location-Based Smartphone Applications: An Application of the Privacy Calculus Model (스마트폰 위치기반 어플리케이션의 이용의도에 영향을 미치는 요인: 프라이버시 계산 모형의 적용)

  • Cha, Hoon S.
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
    • /
    • v.22 no.4
    • /
    • pp.7-29
    • /
    • 2012
  • Smartphone and its applications (i.e. apps) are increasingly penetrating consumer markets. According to a recent report from Korea Communications Commission, nearly 50% of mobile subscribers in South Korea are smartphone users that accounts for over 25 million people. In particular, the importance of smartphone has risen as a geospatially-aware device that provides various location-based services (LBS) equipped with GPS capability. The popular LBS include map and navigation, traffic and transportation updates, shopping and coupon services, and location-sensitive social network services. Overall, the emerging location-based smartphone apps (LBA) offer significant value by providing greater connectivity, personalization, and information and entertainment in a location-specific context. Conversely, the rapid growth of LBA and their benefits have been accompanied by concerns over the collection and dissemination of individual users' personal information through ongoing tracking of their location, identity, preferences, and social behaviors. The majority of LBA users tend to agree and consent to the LBA provider's terms and privacy policy on use of location data to get the immediate services. This tendency further increases the potential risks of unprotected exposure of personal information and serious invasion and breaches of individual privacy. To address the complex issues surrounding LBA particularly from the user's behavioral perspective, this study applied the privacy calculus model (PCM) to explore the factors that influence the adoption of LBA. According to PCM, consumers are engaged in a dynamic adjustment process in which privacy risks are weighted against benefits of information disclosure. Consistent with the principal notion of PCM, we investigated how individual users make a risk-benefit assessment under which personalized service and locatability act as benefit-side factors and information privacy risks act as a risk-side factor accompanying LBA adoption. In addition, we consider the moderating role of trust on the service providers in the prohibiting effects of privacy risks on user intention to adopt LBA. Further we include perceived ease of use and usefulness as additional constructs to examine whether the technology acceptance model (TAM) can be applied in the context of LBA adoption. The research model with ten (10) hypotheses was tested using data gathered from 98 respondents through a quasi-experimental survey method. During the survey, each participant was asked to navigate the website where the experimental simulation of a LBA allows the participant to purchase time-and-location sensitive discounted tickets for nearby stores. Structural equations modeling using partial least square validated the instrument and the proposed model. The results showed that six (6) out of ten (10) hypotheses were supported. On the subject of the core PCM, H2 (locatability ${\rightarrow}$ intention to use LBA) and H3 (privacy risks ${\rightarrow}$ intention to use LBA) were supported, while H1 (personalization ${\rightarrow}$ intention to use LBA) was not supported. Further, we could not any interaction effects (personalization X privacy risks, H4 & locatability X privacy risks, H5) on the intention to use LBA. In terms of privacy risks and trust, as mentioned above we found the significant negative influence from privacy risks on intention to use (H3), but positive influence from trust, which supported H6 (trust ${\rightarrow}$ intention to use LBA). The moderating effect of trust on the negative relationship between privacy risks and intention to use LBA was tested and confirmed by supporting H7 (privacy risks X trust ${\rightarrow}$ intention to use LBA). The two hypotheses regarding to the TAM, including H8 (perceived ease of use ${\rightarrow}$ perceived usefulness) and H9 (perceived ease of use ${\rightarrow}$ intention to use LBA) were supported; however, H10 (perceived effectiveness ${\rightarrow}$ intention to use LBA) was not supported. Results of this study offer the following key findings and implications. First the application of PCM was found to be a good analysis framework in the context of LBA adoption. Many of the hypotheses in the model were confirmed and the high value of $R^2$ (i.,e., 51%) indicated a good fit of the model. In particular, locatability and privacy risks are found to be the appropriate PCM-based antecedent variables. Second, the existence of moderating effect of trust on service provider suggests that the same marginal change in the level of privacy risks may differentially influence the intention to use LBA. That is, while the privacy risks increasingly become important social issues and will negatively influence the intention to use LBA, it is critical for LBA providers to build consumer trust and confidence to successfully mitigate this negative impact. Lastly, we could not find sufficient evidence that the intention to use LBA is influenced by perceived usefulness, which has been very well supported in most previous TAM research. This may suggest that more future research should examine the validity of applying TAM and further extend or modify it in the context of LBA or other similar smartphone apps.

  • PDF

A Qualitative Study on Facilitating Factors of User-Created Contents: Based on Theories of Folklore (사용자 제작 콘텐츠의 활성화 요인에 대한 정성적 연구: 구비문학 이론을 중심으로)

  • Jung, Seung-Ki;Lee, Ki-Ho;Lee, In-Seong;Kim, Jin-Woo
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
    • /
    • v.19 no.2
    • /
    • pp.43-72
    • /
    • 2009
  • Recently, user-created content (UCC) have emerged as popular medium of on-line participation among users. The Internet environment has been constantly evolving, attracting active participation and information sharing among common users. This tendency is a significant deviation from the earlier Internet use as an one-way information channel through which users passively received information or contents from contents providers. Thanks to UCCs online users can now more freely generate and exchange contents; therefore, identifying the critical factors that affect content-generating activities has increasingly become an important issue. This paper proposes a set of critical factors for stimulating contents generation and sharing activities by Internet users. These factors were derived from the theories of folklores such as tales and songs. Based on some shared traits of folklores and UCC content, we found four critical elements which should be heeded in constructing UCC contents, which are: context of culture, context of situation, skill of generator, and response of audience. In addition, we selected three major UCC websites: a specialized contents portal, a general internet portal, and an official contents service site, They have different use environments, user interfaces, and service policies, To identify critical factors for generating, sharing and transferring UCC, we traced user activities, interactions and flows of content in the three UCC websites. Moreover, we conducted extensive interviews with users and operators as well as policy makers in each site. Based on qualitative and quantitative analyses of the data, this research identifies nine critical factors that facilitate contents generation and sharing activities among users. In the context of culture, we suggest voluntary community norms, proactive use of copyrights, strong user relationships, and a fair monetary reward system as critical elements in facilitating the process of contents generation and sharing activities. Norms which were established by users themselves regulate user behavior and influence content format. Strong relationships of users stimulate content generation activities by enhancing collaborative content generation. Particularly, users generate contents through collaboration with others, based on their enhanced relationship and specialized skills. They send and receive contents by leaving messages on website or blogs, using instant messenger or SMS. It is an interesting and important phenomenon, because the quality of contents can be constantly improved and revised, depending on the specialized abilities of those engaged in a particular content. In this process, the reward system is an essential driving factor. Yet, monetary reward should be considered only after some fair criterion is established. In terms of the context of the situation, the quality of contents uploading system was proposed to have strong influence on the content generating activities. Among other influential factors on contents generation activities are generators' specialized skills and involvement of the users were proposed. In addition, the audience response, especially effective development of shared interests as well as feedback, was suggested to have significant influence on contents generation activities. Content generators usually reflect the shared interest of others. Shared interest is a distinct characteristic of UCC and observed in all the three websites, in which common interest is formed by the "threads" embedded with content. Through such threads of information and contents users discuss and share ideas while continuously extending and updating shared contents in the process. Evidently, UCC is a new paradigm representing the next generation of the Internet. In order to fully utilize this innovative paradigm, we need to understand how users take advantage of this medium in generating contents, and what affects their content generation activities. Based on these findings, UCC service providers should design their websites as common playground where users freely interact and share their common interests. As such this paper makes an important first step to gaining better understand about this new communication paradigm created by UCC.

Investigating the Influence of Perceived Usefulness and Self-Efficacy on Online WOM Adoption Based on Cognitive Dissonance Theory: Stick to Your Own Preference VS. Follow What Others Said (온라인 구전정보 수용자의 지각된 정보유용성과 자기효능감이 구전정보 수용의도에 미치는 영향에 관한 연구: 의견고수와 구전수용의 비교)

  • Lee, Jung Hyun;Park, Joo Seok;Kim, Hyun Mo;Park, Jae Hong
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
    • /
    • v.23 no.3
    • /
    • pp.131-154
    • /
    • 2013
  • New internet technologies have created a revolutionary new platform which allows consumers to make decision about product price and quality quickly and provides information about themselves through the transcript of online reviews. By expressing their feelings toward products or services on virtual opinion platforms, users extend their influence into cyberspace as electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM). Existing research indicates that an impact of eWOM on the consumer decision process is influential. For both academic researchers and practitioners, investigating this phenomenon of information sharing in online website is essential given the increasing number of consumers using them as sources of purchase decisions. It is worthwhile to examine the extent to which opinion seekers are willing to accept and adopt online reviews and which factors encourage adoption. Discerning the most motivating aspects of information adoption in particular, could help electronic marketers better promote their brand and presence on the internet. The objectives of this study are to investigate how online WOM influences a persons' purchase decision by discovering which factors encourage information adoption. Especially focused on the self-efficacy, this research investigates how self-efficacy affects on information usefulness and adoption of online information. Although people are exposed to same review or comment about product or service, some accept the reviews while others do not. We notice that accepting online reviews mainly depends on the person's preference or personal characteristics. This study empirically examines this issue by using cognitive dissonance theory. Specifically, in the movie industry, we address few questions-is always positive WOM generating positive effect? What if the movie isn't the person's favorite genre? What if the person who is very self-assertive so doesn't take other's opinion easily? In these cases of cognitive dissonance, is always WOM generating same result? While many studies have focused on one direct of WOM which indicates positive (or negative) informative reviews or comments generate positive (or negative) results and more (or less) profits, this study investigates not only directional properties of WOM but also how people change their opinion towards product or service positive to negative, negative to positive through the online WOM. An experiment was conducted quantitatively by using a sample of 168 users who have experience within the online movie review site, 'Naver Movie'. Users were required to complete a survey regarding reviews and comments taken from the real movie page. The data reflected user's perceptions of online WOM information that determined users' adoption level. Analysis results provide empirical support for the proposed theoretical perspective. When user can't agree with the opinion of online WOM information, in other words, when cognitive dissonance between online WOM information and users' preference occurs, perceived self-efficacy significantly decreases customers' perception of usefulness. And this perception of usefulness plays an important role in determining users' intention to adopt online WOM information. Most of researches have been concentrated on characteristics of online WOM itself such as quality or vividness of information, credibility of source and direction of online WOM, etc. for describing effect of online WOM, but our results suggest that users' personal character (e.g., self-efficacy) plays decisive role for acceptance of online WOM information. Higher self-efficacy means lower possibility to accept the information that represents counter opinion because of cognitive dissonance, whereas the people that have lower self-efficacy are willing to accept the online WOM information as true and refer to purchase decision. This study suggests a model for understanding role of direction of online WOM information. Also, our result implicates the importance of online review supervision and personalized information service by confirming switching opinion negative to positive is more difficult than positive to negative through the online WOM information. This implication would help marketers to manage online reviews of their products or services.