• 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.

• Korean Journal of Childcare and Education
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.5-29
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• 2014

The purpose of this study was to find out various problem behaviors of children who were not diagnosed with any disability, but instead, engaged in problem behaviors. This study also intended to review the difficulties of children with problem behaviors, their teachers' difficulties and needs, to suggest support for child care and education teachers. This study conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews with eight child care and education teachers. The interviews were transcribed into text and analyzed by contents. The results of this study are as follows. Problem behaviors of children described by teachers were classified into external and internal types. In addition, children with problem behaviors had experienced difficulties in maintaining relationships with their teachers, peers and parents. Many teachers were not successful to provide appropriate support for preschoolers who demonstrated problem behaviors in classrooms or some teachers provided individualized support. Teachers adapted the behavioral and the psychological approaches to problem behaviors of preschoolers. However, teachers reported difficulties with children with problem behavior and brought up the following issues on teaching children with problem behaviors; managing troubled matters happening in the class, difficulty in controlling teacher's emotions on problem behaviors, the lack of time, the integrated child care time without teacher in charge of child, the interruption in activity progress, the lack of a special way to deal with problem behaviors, and difficulty in cooperation with families through parents-teacher counseling sessions. Teachers counseled with parents who had a child with problem behaviors and revealed that parents reacted to problem behaviors in various ways such as embarrassment, acceptance, ignorance, or avoidance. Most teachers received assistance and support for teaching children with problem behaviors, from families, local communities and in-service training. Lastly, teachers with preschoolers with problem behaviors needed the support of experts on managing behavior problems, assistant teaching personnel, education for parents and teachers, respects for teachers, psychological counseling or play therapy from professional service agencies, diagnosis service at child care and education centers which children attended, and support networking with agencies. Teachers also required the family support of medical diagnosis and psychological counseling and financial support from the government.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.91-121
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• 2008

Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce or eCommerce, has become a major business trend in these days. The amount of trade conducted electronically has grown extraordinarily by developing the Internet technology. Most electronic commerce has being conducted between businesses to customers; therefore, the researches with respect to e-commerce are to find customer's needs, behaviors through statistical methods. However, the statistical researches, mostly based on a questionnaire, are the static researches, They can tell us the dynamic relationships between initial purchasing and repurchasing. Therefore, this study proposes dynamic research model for analyzing the cause of initial purchasing and repurchasing. This paper is based on the System-Dynamic theory, using the powerful simulation model with some restriction, The restrictions are based on the theory TAM(Technology Acceptance Model), PAM, and TPB(Theory of Planned Behavior). This article investigates not only the customer's purchasing and repurchasing behavior by passing of time but also the interactive effects to one another. This research model has six scenarios and three steps for analyzing customer behaviors. The first step is the research of purchasing situations. The second step is the research of repurchasing situations. Finally, the third step is to study the relationship between initial purchasing and repurchasing. The purpose of six scenarios is to find the customer's purchasing patterns according to the environmental changes. We set six variables in these scenarios by (1) changing the number of products; (2) changing the number of contents in on-line shopping malls; (3) having multimedia files or not in the shopping mall web sites; (4) grading on-line communities; (5) changing the qualities of products; (6) changing the customer's degree of confidence on products. First three variables are applied to study customer's purchasing behavior, and the other variables are applied to repurchasing behavior study. Through the simulation study, this paper presents some inter-relational result about customer purchasing behaviors, For example, Active community actions are not the increasing factor of purchasing but the increasing factor of word of mouth effect, Additionally. The higher products' quality, the more word of mouth effects increase. The number of products and contents on the web sites have same influence on people's buying behaviors. All simulation methods in this paper is not only display the result of each scenario but also find how to affect each other. Hence, electronic commerce firm can make more realistic marketing strategy about consumer behavior through this dynamic simulation research. Moreover, dynamic analysis method can predict the results which help the decision of marketing strategy by using the time-line graph. Consequently, this dynamic simulation analysis could be a useful research model to make firm's competitive advantage. However, this simulation model needs more further study. With respect to reality, this simulation model has some limitations. There are some missing factors which affect customer's buying behaviors in this model. The first missing factor is the customer's degree of recognition of brands. The second factor is the degree of customer satisfaction. The third factor is the power of word of mouth in the specific region. Generally, word of mouth affects significantly on a region's culture, even people's buying behaviors. The last missing factor is the user interface environment in the internet or other on-line shopping tools. In order to get more realistic result, these factors might be essential matters to make better research in the future studies.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• v.39 no.7
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• pp.1030-1037
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• 2010

A fresh juice has become a new functional food available for dieting and health. However, the shelf-life of vegetable juice is very short because of the absence of heat pasteurization process. To elongate the shelf-life of vegetable juices, such as Angelica keiskei and Brassica loeracea var. acephala, the changes of microbiological, chemical and sensory property by UV irradiation were investigated. The total aerobic bacterial numbers of A. keiskei and B. loeracea var. acephala vegetable juices were $3.2{\times}10^5$ and $7.0{\times}10^4\;CFU/mL$, respectively, after wring process. However, the numbers were $3.6{\times}10^3{\sim}9.7{\times}10^3$ and $3.7{\times}10^3{\sim}2.7{\times}10^4\;CFU/mL$ after UV treatment on wring juice, and this lower microbial number was maintained during storage. The number of coliform bacteria also reduced significantly by UV treatment, and the bactericidal effect was higher when the flow rate is slower. The increase of lightness and yellowness, and decrease of redness were observed after treatment of UV on both vegetable juices, but the differences were not significant between flow rates. The ascorbic acid contents of vegetable juices were reduced by UV irradiation regardless of flow rate, and storage. Overall acceptance in sensory analysis revealed that there was no significant difference between the control and vegetable juice irradiated UV at 0 days, but sample with UV treatment showed higher score at 3 days. Therefore, UV treatment on vegetable juice can elongate the shelf-life without any problems in flavor and color.

• Food Science and Preservation
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.977-984
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• 2009

Campbell Early grapes, the major grape variety in Korea, contain 13 - 15% (w/v) sugar, which is lower than that appropriate for fermentation of red wine. Therefore, chaptalization with sucrose is usually used to increase the sugar level to an extent adequate to produce a wine containing about 12% (v/v) alcohol. In the present study, fermentation of freeze-concentrated Campbell Early grape juice at $25^{\circ}Brix$ was investigated using several industrial wine yeasts including Saccharomyces cerevisiae OC2, S. cerevisiae Fermivin, and S. cerevisiae W-3. During fermentation, changes in the levels of soluble solids, alcohol, total acid, and yeast viable counts were investigated. Alcohol content reached maximal levels after 9 days of fermentation, and was 12.6% (v/v) when the Fermivin strain was used and 13% (v/v) when each of the OC2 and W-3 strains was used. No significant between-strain difference was found, except for slightly slower alcohol production and sugar consumption, and a higher total acid content when strain OC2 was used. Changes in the yeast viable counts were similar during fermentation. The physicochemical characteristics of Campbell Early wine prepared using freeze-concentrated juice were investigated by measuring the levels of total phenolic compounds, organic acids, acetaldehyde, and minor alcohols and assessment of color values. Similar levels of soluble solids and total phenolic contents were observed in wines fermented by the three different strains, but a higher level of total acid was noted in OC2-fermented wine and a lower level of alcohol in Fermivin-fermented wine. The highest level of malic acid and the lowest level of lactic acid were detected in Fermivin-fermented wine. Although the wines showed variable levels of acetaldehyde and minor alcohols, the concentrations of these materials were much lower than those mandated by legal regulations promulgated by the Korean National Tax Service. Red and violet colors in OC2-fermented wine were darker than those of W-3-fermented wine. In sensory evaluation, W-3-fermented wine obtained the highest scores for color and flavor. However, the best taste score was reported for the OC2-fermented wine, whereas Fermivin-fermented wine was awarded the highest score in overall acceptance.

• Culinary science and hospitality research
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.120-132
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• 2015

The purpose of this study was to provide preliminary information for the utilization extension of Chinese artichoke(Stachys sieboldii Miq) as a functional food material. The effects of the addition of Chinese artichoke powder(0, 3, 6, 9, and 12%) in white bread formulation on phenolics content and antioxidant properties, and sensory analysis(seven-point hedonic test) were examined. The contents of total polyphenols(TPC), flavonoids (TFC), and tannins(TTC) in Chinese artichoke powder were $139.09{\pm}1.97mg\;GAE/g\;dw$, $74.33{\pm}2.69mg\;QE/g\;dw$, and $40.41{\pm}2.54 mg\;TAE/g\;dw$, respectively. As the amount of Chinese artichoke powder increased, the phenolics contents also significantly increased(p<0.001, p<0.001, and p<0.001 on TPC, TFC, and TTC, respectively), the highest TPC($104.27{\pm}0.13mg\;GAE/g\;dw$), TFC($71.03{\pm}1.75mg\;QE/g\;dw$), and TTC($8.76{\pm}0.12mg\;TAE/g\;dw$) were achieved in the white bread having the highest percentage of Chinese artichoke powder(12%). The $IC_{50}$ values of Chinese artichoke extract for 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl(DPPH) and 2,2'-azino-bis(3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid(ABTS) radical scavenging activities were 1.42 mg/mL and 1.57 mg/mL, respectively. Scavenging activities of DPPH and ABTS radicals of white bread were significantly increased according to the levels of added Chinese artichoke powder(p<0.001 and p<0.001, respectively). In the acceptance test, the white bread containing 9% Chinese artichoke powder was ranked significantly higher than the other groups according to all sensory parameters such as appearance, flavor, taste, texture, and the overall acceptability. Overall, Chinese artichoke enhanced white bread could be developed as an antioxidant-enriched bread with good sensorial properties.

• Culinary science and hospitality research
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.65-78
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• 2014

This study was aimed to develop short necked clam stock, which is the base of sauce, soup, etc., using various nourishing elements in short necked clams. In short necked clam stock with different heating times, the moisture content was significantly different (p < 0.05). For the color value of short necked clam stock, L value was the highest in S1(31.15), while the highest a value was found in S5(-0.36) and the highest b value in S5(0.67). pH was the lowest as 7.35 in S5. When heating time increased, pH decreased significantly (p < 0.001). The sugar content was the highest as $3.30^{\circ}Brix$ in S5 and the lowest as $2.63^{\circ}Brix$ in S1. The salinity content was the lowest as 0.73% in S1, and it increased significantly(p < 0.001) with increased heating time. Na was the highest among the mineral contents and the highest K, Mg, Ca, Fe contents were found in S5 heated for 60 mins. Twenty one kinds of free amino acid were detected in short necked clams. The highest essential amino acid content was arginine, the highest flavor enhancing free amino acid was glycine, and the highest derivative amino acid was taurine. The test for characteristic differences of short necked clam stock showed that savory taste and savory flavor of S4 heated for 50 mins were the highest. According to the results of acceptance test, S3 showed the best results. In conclusion, short necked clam stock showed great preference with increased heating time, and the preference has increased when it was simmered for 35~40 mins.

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.23-52
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• 2015

Purpose This study aims to understand the role of digital knowledge in accepting the green technology. This study combined digital option theory with the second version of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2). Contrary to other studies in which the UTAUT2 is used to explain IT adoption behavior, we look at the relationship between IT and the UTAUT2 from a new angle, incorporating an important aspect of IT, that is, digitized knowledge richness, as a determinant of the UTAUT2. Design/methodology/approach Grounded in the UTAUT2, a content analysis was conducted to investigate novel constructs dedicated to explaining green technology adoption. In this study, an amended version of the UTAUT2 specific to green technology is offered that better explains the green technology adoption behavior of consumers. Using the items identified by content analysis, we developed a questionnaire with 36 survey items. We measured all the items on a seven-point Likert-type scale. We randomly selected 402 survey respondents from a set of panel data. After a pilot study, we analyzed the main survey data by using PLS 2.0M3 and SPSS 20.0, and employed structural equation modeling to test the hypotheses. Findings The results suggest that the UTAUT2 was found to be extendable to technologies other than conventional IT. Social influence is more significant than conventional utilitarian and hedonic-based constructs such as those utilized in the UTAUT and UTAUT2 in explaining adoption behavior in the context of green technologies. The hypothesized connection between digitized knowledge richness and adoption intention was supported by the results of studies on the role of IT in formation of attitudes toward eco-friendly production. The results also indicate that digital knowledge can also encourage people to try green technology when they learn that their peers are already using the technology successfully.

• The Journal of Sustainable Design and Educational Environment Research
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.34-43
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to provide a basis for determining when a school established long term school plans accepted by analyzing the trend of increase or decrease elementary school students 30 years to target of following nine cities, 552 elementary schools in Korea - 4 metropolitan cities(Ilsan, Bundang, Jungdong, Pyungchon, Sanbon, Dongtan and Kwangkyo), 4 central regional cities (Chunan, Asan, Seosan and Nonsan), 3 south-eastern regional cities(Pohang, Woolsan, Jinju, Changwon and Kyungsan) and 4south-western regional cities(Kwangju, Jeonju, Suncheon and Kunsan) for this purpose. Results of this study are as follows: First, the most common type was type 5, accounting for 56.8% (658) of the total, followed by type 11 (12.8%), type 13 (7.9%), type 15 (5.6%). Of the total 15 types, type 1, type 3, type 7 and type 14 accounted for less than 1% of the total. Second, the results of the Conflict Model I and Conflict Model II showed that Type1 and Type7 were not needed to be adopted.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.79-93
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• 2015

With the rapid development of information technology, the ways of usage have changed drastically. The ways and efficiency of traditional service application to data processing already could not satisfy the requirements of modern users. Nowadays, users have already understood the importance of data. Therefore, the processing and saving of big data have become the main research of the Internet service company. In China, with the rise and explosion of 115 Cloud leads to other technology companies have began to join the battle of cloud services market. Although currently Chinese cloud services are still mainly dominated by cloud storage service, the series of service contents based on cloud storage service have been affirmed by users, and users willing to try these new ways of services. Thus, how to let users to keep using cloud services has become a topic that worth for exploring and researching. The academia often uses the TAM model with statistical analysis to analyze and check the attitude of users in using the system. However, the basic TAM model obviously already could not satisfy the increasing scale of system. Therefore, the appropriate expansion and adjustment to the TAM model (i. e. TAM2 or TAM3) are very necessary. This study has used the status of Chinese internet users and the related researches in other areas in order to expand and improve the TAM model by adding the brand influence, hardware environment and external environments to fulfill the purpose of this study. Based on the research model, the questionnaires were developed and online survey was conducted targeting the cloud services users of four Chinese main cities. Data were obtained from 210 respondents were used for analysis to validate the research model. The analysis results show that the external factors which are service contents, and brand influence have a positive influence to perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. However, the external factor hardware environment only has a positive influence to the factor of perceived ease of use. Furthermore, the perceived security factor that is influenced by brand influence has a positive influence persistent intention to use. Persistent intention to use also was influenced by the perceived usefulness and persistent intention to use was influenced by the perceived ease of use. Finally, this research analyzed external variables' attributes using other perspective and tried to explain the attributes. It presents Chinese cloud service users are more interested in fundamental cloud services than extended services. In private cloud services, both of increased user size and cooperation among companies are important in the study. This study presents useful opinions for the purpose of strengthening attitude for private cloud service users can use this service persistently. Overall, it can be summarized by considering the all three external factors could make Chinese users keep using the personal could services. In addition, the results of this study can provide strong references to technology companies including cloud service provider, internet service provider, and smart phone service provider which are main clients are Chinese users.