• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.49-67
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• 2015

Recently, emerging the notion of big data and social media has led us to enter data's big bang. Social networking services are widely used by people around the world, and they have become a part of major communication tools for all ages. Over the last decade, as online social networking sites become increasingly popular, companies tend to focus on advanced social media analysis for their marketing strategies. In addition to social media analysis, companies are mainly concerned about propagating of negative opinions on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as e-commerce sites. The effect of online word of mouth (WOM) such as product rating, product review, and product recommendations is very influential, and negative opinions have significant impact on product sales. This trend has increased researchers' attention to a natural language processing, such as a sentiment analysis. A sentiment analysis, also refers to as an opinion mining, is a process of identifying the polarity of subjective information and has been applied to various research and practical fields. However, there are obstacles lies when Korean language (Hangul) is used in a natural language processing because it is an agglutinative language with rich morphology pose problems. Therefore, there is a lack of Korean natural language processing resources such as a sentiment lexicon, and this has resulted in significant limitations for researchers and practitioners who are considering sentiment analysis. Our study builds a Korean sentiment lexicon with collective intelligence, and provides API (Application Programming Interface) service to open and share a sentiment lexicon data with the public (www.openhangul.com). For the pre-processing, we have created a Korean lexicon database with over 517,178 words and classified them into sentiment and non-sentiment words. In order to classify them, we first identified stop words which often quite likely to play a negative role in sentiment analysis and excluded them from our sentiment scoring. In general, sentiment words are nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs as they have sentimental expressions such as positive, neutral, and negative. On the other hands, non-sentiment words are interjection, determiner, numeral, postposition, etc. as they generally have no sentimental expressions. To build a reliable sentiment lexicon, we have adopted a concept of collective intelligence as a model for crowdsourcing. In addition, a concept of folksonomy has been implemented in the process of taxonomy to help collective intelligence. In order to make up for an inherent weakness of folksonomy, we have adopted a majority rule by building a voting system. Participants, as voters were offered three voting options to choose from positivity, negativity, and neutrality, and the voting have been conducted on one of the largest social networking sites for college students in Korea. More than 35,000 votes have been made by college students in Korea, and we keep this voting system open by maintaining the project as a perpetual study. Besides, any change in the sentiment score of words can be an important observation because it enables us to keep track of temporal changes in Korean language as a natural language. Lastly, our study offers a RESTful, JSON based API service through a web platform to make easier support for users such as researchers, companies, and developers. Finally, our study makes important contributions to both research and practice. In terms of research, our Korean sentiment lexicon plays an important role as a resource for Korean natural language processing. In terms of practice, practitioners such as managers and marketers can implement sentiment analysis effectively by using Korean sentiment lexicon we built. Moreover, our study sheds new light on the value of folksonomy by combining collective intelligence, and we also expect to give a new direction and a new start to the development of Korean natural language processing.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.8
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• pp.236-250
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• 2016

This study was conducted to provide baseline data regarding functional cosmetics so that Inula. based cosmetics can increase its competitiveness in the market as well as to understand current trends to enable anticipation of demands for future product development. For this research, general consumers over the age of 20 residing in Seoul and the Gyeonggi district were surveyed. The results show consumers preferred serum-type products among various types of cosmetics, and that they purchased these once every 1-3 months. Consumers also preferred these products in less than 10-30ml capacity, and at costs of less than 30,000-50,000 KRW. For whitening, functional cosmetics consumers also preferred the serum type, in less than 30-50ml capacity and priced less than 30,000-50,000 KRW. Consumers preferred to purchase functional cosmetics in single units. The major purchasing location, with a high preference rate, was cosmetic stores, and the major sources of information, also with high preference rates, were 'experienced reviews from family, friends and acquaintances' and 'TV advertisements'. Respondents selected 'over 50,000 KRW' the most for all items when responding to 'Purchase Intent for Functional Cosmetics containing Inula', and responded that they were willing to pay 10%-30% more for functional cosmetics containing Inula compared to standard functional cosmetics. These results show that businesses in the cosmetics industry need to take consumer demand into account when developing new functional cosmetic products, as well as establish plans to create specialized spaces that provide better quality service and increase word of mouth effect through better utilization of various types of offline media, social media, and blogs. The study also shows a need for businesses to develop products fully utilizing the Inula flower, which has been shown to be effective as a natural skin whitener, wrinkle reducer and skin moisturizer, to appeal to the increasing number of customers interested in health and beauty.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.59-80
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• 2008

Recently, e-sports are growing with potentiality as a new industry with conspicuous profit model. But studies that dealing with e-sports are not enough. Hence, proposes of this paper are both to establish basic model that is for the design of e-sport marketing strategy and to contribute toward future studies which are related to e-sports. Recently, the researches to explain sports-sponsorship through the identification theory have been discovered. Many researches say that somewhat proper identification is a requirement for most sponsors to improve the their images which is essential to sponsorship activity. Consequently, the research for sponsorship associated with identification in the e-sports, not in the physical sports is the core sector of this study. We extracted the variables from online's major characteristics and existing sport sponsorship researches. First, because e-sports mean the tournaments or leagues in the use of online game, the main event of the game is likely to call it online game. Online media's attributes are distinguished from those of offline. Especially, interactivity, anonymity, and expandibility as a e-sport game attributes are able to be mentioned. So, these inherent online attributes are examined on the relationship with flow. Second, in physical sports games, Fisher(1998) revealed that team similarity and team attractivity were positively related to team identification. Wann(1996) said that the result of former game influenced the evaluation of the next game, then in turn has an effect on the identification of team supporters. Considering these results in the e-sports side, e-sports gamer' attractivity, similarity, and match result seem to be important precedent variables of the identification with a gamer. So, these e-sport gamer attributes are examined on the relationship with both flow and identification with a gamer. Csikszentmihalyi(1988) defined the term flow as feeling status for him to be making current positive experience optimally. Hoffman and Novak(1996) also said that if a user experienced the flow he would visit a website without any reward. Therefore flow might be positively associated with user's identification with a gamer. And, Swanson(2003) disclosed that team identification influenced the positive results of sponsorship, which included attitude toward sponsors, sponsor patronage, and satisfaction with sponsors. That is, identification with a gamer expect to be connected with corporation identification significantly. According to the above, we can design the following research model. All variables used in this study(interactivity, anonymity, expandibility, attractivity, similarity, match result, flow, identification with a gamer, and identification with a sponsor) definitely were defined operationally underlying precedent researches. Sample collection was carried out to the person who has an experience to have enjoyed e-sports during June 2006. Much portion of samples is men because much more men than women enjoy e-sports in general. Two-step approach was used to test the hypotheses. First, confirmatory factor analysis was committed to guarantee the validity and reliability of variables. The results showed that all variables had not only intensive and discriminant validity, but also reliability. Then, research model was examined with fully structural equation using LISREL 8.3 version. The fitness of the suggested model mostly was at the acceptable level. Shortly speaking about the results, first of all, in e-sports game attributes, only interactivity which is called a basic feature in online situation affected flow positively. Secondly, in e-sports gamer's attributes, similarity with a gamer and match result influenced flow positively, but there was no significant effect in the relationship between the attractivity of a gamer and flow. And as expected, similarity had an effect on identification with a gamer significantly. But unexpectedly attractivity and match result did not influence identification with a gamer significantly. Just the same as the fact verified in the many precedent researches, flow greatly influenced identification with a gamer, and identification with a gamer continually had an influence on the identification with a sponsor significantly. There are some implications in these results. If the sponsor of e-sports supports the pro-game player who absolutely should have the superior ability to others and is similar to the user enjoying e-sports, many amateur gamers will feel much of the flow and identification with a pro-gamer, and then after all, feel the identification with a sponsor. Such identification with a sponsor leads people enjoying e-sports to have purchasing intention for products produced by the sponsor and to make a positive word-of-mouth for those products or the sponsor. For the future studies, we recommend a few ideas. Based on the results of this study, it is necessary to find new variables relating to the e-sports, which is not mentioned in this study. For this work to be possible, qualitative research seems to be needed to consider the inherent e-sport attributes. Finally, to generalize the results related to e-sports, a wide range of generations not a specific generation should be researched.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.25-57
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• 2012

This study identified motives for writing apparel product reviews in online stores, and determined what motives increase the behavior of writing reviews. It also classified store customers based on the type of writing motives, and clarified the characteristics of internet purchase behavior and of a demographic profile. Data were collected from 252 females aged 20s' and 30s' who have experience of reading and writing reviews on online shopping. The five types of writing motives were altruistic information sharing, remedying of a grievance and vengeance, economic incentives, helping new product development, and the expression of satisfaction feelings. Among five motives, altruistic information sharing, economic incentives, and helping new product development stimulate writing reviews. Store customers who write reviews were classified into three groups based on their writing motive types: Other consumer advocates(29.8%), self-interested shoppers(40.5%) and shoppers with moderate motives(29.8%). There were significant differences among three groups in writing behavior (the frequency of writing reviews, writing intent of reviews, duration of writing reviews, and frequency of online shopping) and age. Based on results, managerial implications were suggested. Long Abstract : The purpose of present study is to identify the types of writing motives on online shopping, and to clarify the motives affecting the behavior of writing reviews. This study also classifies online shoppers based on the motive types, and identifies the characteristics of the classified groups in terms of writing behavior, frequency of online shopping, and demographics. Use and Gratification Theory was adopted in this study. Qualitative research (focus group interview) and quantitative research were used. Korean women(20 to 39 years old) who reported experience with purchasing clothing online, and reading and writing reviews were selected as samples(n=252). Most of the respondents were relatively young (20-34yrs., 86.1%,), single (61.1%), employed(61.1%) and residents living in big cities(50.9%). About 69.8% of respondents read and 40.5% write apparel reviews frequently or very frequently. 24.6% of the respondents indicated an "average" in their writing frequency. Based on the qualitative result of focus group interviews and previous studies on motives for online community activities, measurement items of motives for writing after-purchase reviews were developed. All items were used a five-point Likert scale with endpoints 1 (strongly disagree) and 5 (strongly agree). The degree of writing behavior was measured by items concerning experience of writing reviews, frequency of writing reviews, amount of writing reviews, and intention of writing reviews. A five-point scale(strongly disagree-strongly agree) was employed. SPSS 18.0 was used for exploratory factor analysis, K-means cluster analysis, one-way ANOVA(Scheffe test) and ${\chi}^2$-test. Confirmatory factor analysis and path model analysis were conducted by AMOS 18.0. By conducting principal components factor analysis (varimax rotation, extracting factors with eigenvalues above 1.0) on the measurement items, five factors were identified: Altruistic information sharing, remedying of a grievance and vengeance, economic incentives, helping new product development, and expression of satisfaction feelings(see Table 1). The measurement model including these final items was analyzed by confirmatory factor analysis. The measurement model had good fit indices(GFI=.918, AGFI=.884, RMR=.070, RMSEA=.054, TLI=.941) except for the probability value associated with the ${\chi}^2$ test(${\chi}^2$=189.078, df=109, p=.00). Convergent validities of all variables were confirmed using composite reliability. All SMC values were found to be lower than AVEs confirming discriminant validity. The path model's goodness-of-fit was greater than the recommended limits based on several indices(GFI=.905, AGFI=.872, RMR=.070, RMSEA=.052, TLI=.935; ${\chi}^2$=260.433, df=155, p=.00). Table 2 shows that motives of altruistic information sharing, economic incentives and helping new product development significantly increased the degree of writing product reviews of online shopping. In particular, the effect of altruistic information sharing and pursuit of economic incentives on the behavior of writing reviews were larger than the effect of helping new product development. As shown in table 3, online store shoppers were classified into three groups: Other consumer advocates (29.8%), self-interested shoppers (40.5%), and moderate shoppers (29.8%). There were significant differences among the three groups in the degree of writing reviews (experience of writing reviews, frequency of writing reviews, amount of writing reviews, intention of writing reviews, and duration of writing reviews, frequency of online shopping) and age. For five aspects of writing behavior, the group of other consumer advocates who is mainly comprised of 20s had higher scores than the other two groups. There were not any significant differences between self-interested group and moderate group regarding writing behavior and demographics.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.1-34
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• 2010

Introduction As consumers' purchase behavior change into a rational and practical direction, the discount store industry came to have keen competition along with rapid external growth. Therefore as a solution, distribution businesses are concentrating on developing PB(Private Brand) which can realize differentiation and profitability at the same time. And as improvement in customer loyalty beyond customer satisfaction is effective in surviving in an environment with keen competition, PB is being used as a strategic tool to improve customer loyalty. To improve loyalty among PB users, it is necessary to develop PB by examining properties of a customer group, first of all, quality level perceived by consumers should be met to obtain customer satisfaction and customer trust and consequently induce customer loyalty. To provide results of systematic analysis on relations between antecedents influenced perceived quality and variables affecting customer loyalty, this study proposed a research model based on causal relations verified in prior researches and set 16 hypotheses about relations among 9 theoretical variables. Data was collected from 400 adult customers residing in Seoul and the Metropolitan area and using large scale discount stores, among them, 375 copies were analyzed using SPSS 15.0 and Amos 7.0. The findings of the present study followed as; We ascertained that the higher company reputation, brand reputation, product experience and brand familiarity, the higher perceived quality. The study also examined the higher perceived quality, the higher customer satisfaction, customer trust and customer loyalty. The findings showed that the higher customer satisfaction and customer trust, the higher customer loyalty. As for moderating effects between PB and NB in terms of influences of perceived quality factors on perceived quality, we can ascertain that PB was higher than NB in the influences of company reputation on perceived quality while NB was higher than PB in the influences of brand reputation and brand familiarity on perceived quality. These results of empirical analysis will be useful for those concerned to do marketing activities based on a clearer understanding of antecedents and consecutive factors influenced perceived quality. At last, discussions about academical and managerial implications in these results, we suggested the limitations of this study and the future research directions. Research Model and Hypotheses Test After analyzing if antecedent variables having influence on perceived quality shows any difference between PB and NB in terms of their influences on them, the relation between variables that have influence on customer loyalty was determined as Figure 1. We established 16 hypotheses to test and hypotheses are as follows; H1-1: Perceived price has a positive effect on perceived quality. H1-2: It is expected that PB and NB would have different influence in terms of perceived price on perceived quality. H2-1: Company reputation has a positive effect on perceived quality. H2-2: It is expected that PB and NB would have different influence in terms of company reputation on perceived quality. H3-1: Brand reputation has a positive effect on perceived quality. H3-2: It is expected that PB and NB would have different influence in terms of brand reputation on perceived quality. H4-1: Product experience has a positive effect on perceived quality. H4-2: It is expected that PB and NB would have different influence in terms of product experience on perceived quality. H5-1: Brand familiarity has a positive effect on perceived quality. H5-2: It is expected that PB and NB would have different influence in terms of brand familiarity on perceived quality. H6: Perceived quality has a positive effect on customer satisfaction. H7: Perceived quality has a positive effect on customer trust. H8: Perceived quality has a positive effect on customer loyalty. H9: Customer satisfaction has a positive effect on customer trust. H10: Customer satisfaction has a positive effect on customer loyalty. H11: Customer trust has a positive effect on customer loyalty. Results from analyzing main effects of research model is shown as

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.65-96
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• 2012

Brand has received much attention from considerable marketing research. When consumers consume product or services, they are exposed to a lot of brand related stimuli. These contain brand personality, brand experience, brand identity, brand communications and so on. A special kind of new crisis occasionally confronting companies' brand management today is the brand related rumor. An important influence on consumers' purchase decision making is the word-of-mouth spread by other consumers and most decisions are influenced by other's recommendations. In light of this influence, firms have reasonable reason to study and understand consumer-to-consumer communication such as brand rumor. The importance of brand rumor to marketers is increasing as the number of internet user and SNS(social network service) site grows. Due to the development of internet technology, people can spread rumors without the limitation of time, space and place. However relatively few studies have been published in marketing journals and little is known about brand rumors in the marketplace. The study of rumor has a long history in all major social science. But very few studies have dealt with the antecedents and consequences of any kind of brand rumor. Rumor has been generally described as a story or statement in general circulation without proper confirmation or certainty as to fact. And it also can be defined as an unconfirmed proposition, passed along from people to people. Rosnow(1991) claimed that rumors were transmitted because people needed to explain ambiguous and uncertain events and talking about them reduced associated anxiety. Especially negative rumors are believed to have the potential to devastate a company's reputation and relations with customers. From the perspective of marketer, negative rumors are considered harmful and extremely difficult to control in general. It is becoming a threat to a company's sustainability and sometimes leads to negative brand image and loss of customers. Thus there is a growing concern that these negative rumors can damage brands' reputations and lead them to financial disaster too. In this study we aimed to distinguish antecedents of brand rumor transmission and investigate the effects of brand rumor characteristics on rumor spread intention. We also found key components in personal acceptance of brand rumor. In contextualist perspective, we tried to unify the traditional psychological and sociological views. In this unified research approach we defined brand rumor's characteristics based on five major variables that had been found to influence the process of rumor spread intention. The five factors of usefulness, source credibility, message credibility, worry, and vividness, encompass multi level elements of brand rumor. We also selected product involvement as a control variable. To perform the empirical research, imaginary Korean 'Kimch' brand and related contamination rumor was created and proposed. Questionnaires were collected from 178 Korean samples. Data were collected from college students who have been experienced the focal product. College students were regarded as good subjects because they have a tendency to express their opinions in detail. PLS(partial least square) method was adopted to analyze the relations between variables in the equation model. The most widely adopted causal modeling method is LISREL. However it is poorly suited to deal with relatively small data samples and can yield not proper solutions in some cases. PLS has been developed to avoid some of these limitations and provide more reliable results. To test the reliability using SPSS 16 s/w, Cronbach alpha was examined and all the values were appropriate showing alpha values between .802 and .953. Subsequently, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted successfully. And structural equation modeling has been used to analyze the research model using smartPLS(ver. 2.0) s/w. Overall, R² of adoption of rumor is .476 and R² of intention of rumor transmission is .218. The overall model showed a satisfactory fit. The empirical results can be summarized as follows. According to the results, the variables of brand rumor characteristic such as source credibility, message credibility, worry, and vividness affect argument strength of rumor. And argument strength of rumor also affects rumor intention. On the other hand, the relationship between perceived usefulness and argument strength of rumor is not significant. The moderating effect of product involvement on the relations between argument strength of rumor and rumor W.O.M intention is not supported neither. Consequently this study suggests some managerial and academic implications. We consider some implications for corporate crisis management planning, PR and brand management. This results show marketers that rumor is a critical factor for managing strong brand assets. Also for researchers, brand rumor should become an important thesis of their interests to understand the relationship between consumer and brand. Recently many brand managers and marketers have focused on the short-term view. They just focused on strengthen the positive brand image. According to this study we suggested that effective brand management requires managing negative brand rumors with a long-term view of marketing decisions.