• Korean Business Review
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• v.15
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• pp.153-179
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• 2002

The purpose of this study is to explore the context dependencies of perceived product typicality and favorableness led by typicality. Major findings and their marketing implications are as follow. First of all, while the typicality effect were evident in simle choice sets which consist of typical product and atypical one, entrance of extreme atypical product eroded the favorableness toward typical product. This implies that competitive advantage of pioneering typical brand can not be sustained when choice set is enlarged with entrance of distinctive atypical brands. Secondly, adding attractive and unattractive common attributes to all the products in choice set reduced the difference among perceived typicality of alternative brands. But added attractive common feature was analyzed to enhance favorableness of both typical brand and extreme atypical product. This finding implies that brands should have distinctive identity to be benefited from competitive adding features among brands with the evolution of market. Finally, when consumers expect to provide the explanation and justification for their evaluations and choices to others, they are shown to prefer and choose typical product which is effective to explain their reasons and to persuade others for their choice. This can be interpreted as consumers favor and choose conventional typical alternatives when they should justify their decision to others as with symbolic and expressive products and public and organizational buying.

• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.475-487
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• 2008

The purposes of this study are to find the values of playful design by exploring what forms of playful expressions and characteristics appear in the haute couture collections that feature "high culture" other than street fashion or popular fashion and to help expand the scope to include newer and more creative design ideas. Concerning theoretical background, the study reviewed the literature to understand the concept of playfulness and see what types of playfulness there are and how it is expressed. Based on the results, the study examined the features of playfulness by analyzing the works of haute couture collections which since 2000. The results can be summarized as follows: First, designers in the haute couture collections constructed their own identities by expressing their instinctive desire for playfulness through graffiti such as cartoons or scribbles and delivering direct and specific messages or ambiguous and symbolic meanings through such things. Second, the haute couture collections revealed the human body in a transformed or distorted shape through deformation of clothes or accessories presented brand-new dressing styles by breaking away from the past ways of dressing; and expressed playfulness intentionally with distorted materials. Third, is the "depaysement" technique. This collage technique selects all possible objects going beyond inartistic routine matters or boundaries of which we are aware and changes their positions and purposes of use to express the playfulness of "harmony in disharmony." Fourth, the haute couture collections created a feeling of playfulness by featuring parodies of retro elements, a slice of popular culture, or a variety of painting styles. Finally, like using dolls or toys as accessories or making direct use of parts of clothes, combinations between attributes given by the images of those accessories themselves and creativities found in haute couture dresses are just as fun of authoritarian bias in favor of prestigiousness.

• Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.39-47
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• 1988

The aim of this study is to grasp the actual state of high school girls' clothing after liberalization of their uniform and to provide the reasonable guidance materials in clothing for both schools and homes. These are the results of the study 1. In the aspect of the favor of clothing and the interest in about clothes. a. They were fond of wearing "T" shirts, blue jeans in summer and pants and jackets in spring as their school wear. That implies that they enjoy wearing active and practical clothes. b. In the aspect of color, majority of them favored blue or similar colors, Also they had the tendency to love soft, simple clothe and more students preferred cloth without pattern. c. In their choice of them, they seldom paid attention to the informative-label are not their chief interest. d. More than half of girls prepare one or two suits in advance in a season, and they would prepare them deliberately This implies that their everyday life inclothing is based on the economic motive. 2. In the aspect of the purchasing clothes, a. Most of the girls bought them at the market and some of them at the direct-sales stall. b. when they purchased clothes, most girls were accompanied by their/mother and senior girls more often by their friends. c. The price and kinds of their favorite clothes such as "T" shirts and blouse was 5,000 won or so, and skirts, pants, one-piece and jackets are from the range of 5,000 won to below 10,000 won mostly. d. In regard to so-called brand-name items by popular designers, half of the girls responded that they wear some of such kinds of items because of superiority of sewing and longterm wearing, and the other half tend not to wear them due to high price.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.24 no.10
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• pp.1449-1460
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• 2021

The visual design elements of packaging play an vital role in attracting consumers' attention, forming their sense of pleasure and sensory expectations, as well as having an important impact on the actual product experience. This study aims to explore whether the colors and textures in the packaging design elements of canned beer will affect consumers' senses, judgments and taste perception of canned beer. Participants in Survey I (N=193) evaluated their expectations for beer freshness, softness, bitterness and alcohol content by observing the packaging of canned beer, then recorded whether they could get the expected experience when tasting beer, and evaluated their preference and purchase intention. In the Survey II, 4 kind of colors and 2 types of texture shapes were applied, and all participants were provided with the same beer for multivariate cross contract analysis to evaluate the specific impact of color and texture of packaging design elements on consumers' taste and the interaction between sensory judgment and taste perception.The results showed that both colors and textures had a significant affect on the sensory expectation (pre-tasting score) of canned beer, but their effects on the sensory score after tasting (actual perception)were inobvious. The analysis of the influence of the interaction between color, texture and shape on taste perception shows that when the expected packaging appearance perception is similar to the actual drinking perception (i.e., straight line and B/G or arc line and Y/R), it is more likely to obtain consumers' favor and higher purchase intention evaluation than the inconsistent canned beer packaging (i.e., straight line and Y/R and arc line and B/G). This paper discusses the influence of these results on the packaging design of canned beer and the possibility of improving the brand efficiency by meeting the visual elements of packaging design expected by consumers.

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.113-124
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• 1999

The purpose of this study is to provide for the basic data useful to designing a scientific and systematic merchandising program for infants' wear brands. For this purpose, designer and MD working for 8 local infants' wear brands were surveyed to analyze the conditions of their designing and merchandising of infants' wears. The results of this study can be summarized as follows; 1. Only 3 brands employed MD for their merchandising departments. The average number of clothing designers employed by the subject brands was 3-5, while that of colorists was 1-2, and that of accessory designers was 2-3. On the other hand, the average number of patternmakers employed was about 1, while that of sewer was 4. 2. Many of the sample infants' wear brands tended to collect and analyze the information for merchandising, while most of them relied less on outside planned data. The information source upon which they relied most was 'local and foreign fashion magazine', followed by 'data surveyed by local and foreign department stores' and 'data surveyed for local fabric markets' in their order. Meanwhile, the main color represented 70-90% of the total colors, while the pastel groups accounted for 30-40% and vivid color groups for 40-50%. On the other hand, knit accounted for about 60% of their materials, while woven and sweater accounted for 30% and 10%, respectively. 3. In overall terms, most of brands felt that their brands were preferred as much as or less than their competitive brands, while consumers felt expensive for infants' wears. Namely, most consumers were dissatisfied with the price levels of infants' wears. On the other hand, consumers were found to favor the pastel color groups a little more, while being aware of each brand's sizes more or less precisely. 4. The medium upon which the infants' wear brands depended most for their advertisement was 'magazine', followed by 'radio' and 'catalogue' in their order. Most of them were analyzing the results of their sale turnover monthly or frequently in order to review their sales performances in comparison with their competitors. Most of brands bothered to program a sale strategy 4 times a year, primarily to dispose the stocks or find a breakthrough for their sales activities.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.19-45
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• 2008

This study is to empirically examine the primary dimensions of visual merchandising (VMD) of internet shopping mall, namely store design, merchandise, and merchandising cues, to be a attractive virtual store to the shoppers. The authors reviewed the literature related to the major components of VMD from the perspective of the AIDA model, which has been mainly applied to the offline store settings. The major purposes of the study are as follows; first, tries to derive the variables related with the components of visual merchandising through reviewing the existing literatures, establish the hypotheses, and test it empirically. Second, examines the relationships between the components of VMD and the attitude toward the VMD, however, putting more emphasis on finding out the component structure of the VMD. VMD needs to be examined with the perspective that an online shopping mall is a virtual self-service or clerkless store, which could reduce the number of employees, help the shoppers search, evaluate and purchase for themselves, and to be explored in terms of the in-store persuasion processes of customers. This study reviewed the literatures related to store design, merchandise, and merchandising cues which might be relevant to the store, product, and promotion respectively. VMD is a total communication tool, and AIDA model could explain the in-store consumer behavior of online shopping. Store design has to do with triggering a consumer attention to the online mall, merchandise with a product related interest, and merchandising cues with promotions such as recommendation and links that induce the desire to pruchase. These three steps might be seen as the processes for purchase actions. The theoretical rationale for the relationship between VMD and AIDA could be found in Tyagi(2005) that the three steps of consumer-oriented merchandising are a store, a product assortment, and placement, in Omar(1999) that three types of interior display are a architectural design display, commodity display, and point-of-sales(POS) display, and in Davies and Ward(2005) that the retail store interior image is related to an atmosphere, merchandise, and in-store promotion. Lee et al(2000) suggested as the web merchandising components a merchandising cues, a shopping metaphor which is an assistant tool for search, a store design, a layout(web design), and a product assortment. The store design which includes differentiation, simplicity and navigation is supposed to be related to the attention to the virtual store. Second, the merchandise dimensions comprising product assortments, visual information and product reputation have to do with the interest in the product offerings. Finally, the merchandising cues that refer to merchandiser(MD)'s recommendation of products and providing the hyperlinks to relevant goods for the shopper is concerned with attempt to induce the desire to purchase. The questionnaire survey was carried out to collect the data about the consumers who would shop at internet shopping malls frequently. To select the subject malls, the mall ranking data announced by a mall rating agency was used to differentiate the most popular and least popular five mall each. The subjects was instructed to answer the questions after navigating the designated mall for five minutes. The 300 questionnaire was distributed to the consumers, 166 samples were used in the final analysis. The empirical testing focused on identifying and confirming the dimensionality of VMD and its subdimensions using a structural equation modeling method. The confirmatory factor analysis for the endogeneous and exogeneous variables was carried out in four parts. The second-order factor analysis was done for a store design, a merchandise, and a merchandising cues, and first-order confirmatory factor analysis for the attitude toward the VMD. The model test results shows that the chi-square value of structural equation is 144.39(d.f 49), significant at 0.01 level which means the proposed model was rejected. But, judging from the ratio of chi-square value vs. degree of freedom, the ratio was 2.94 which smaller than an acceptable level of 3.0, RMR is 0.087 which is higher than a generally acceptable level of 0.08. GFI and AGFI is turned out to be 0.90 and 0.84 respectively. Both NFI and NNFI is 0.94, and CFI 0.95. The major test results are as follows; first, the second-order factor analysis and structural equational modeling reveals that the differentiation, simplicity and ease of identifying current status of the transaction are confirmed to be subdimensions of store design and to be a significant predictors of the dependent variable. This result implies that when designing an online shopping mall, it is necessary to differentiate visually from other malls to improve the effectiveness of the communications of store design. That is, the differentiated store design raise the contrast stimulus to sensory organs to promote the memory of the store and to have a favorable attitude toward the VMD of a store. The results that navigation which means the easiness of identifying current status of shopping affects the attitude to VMD could be interpreted that the navigating processes via the hyperlinks which is characteristics of an internet shopping is a complex and cognitive process and shoppers are likely to lack the sense of overall structure of the store. Consequently, shoppers are likely to be alost amid shopping not knowing where to go. The orientation tool enhance the accessibility of information to raise the perceptive power about the store environment.(Titus & Everett 1995) Second, the primary dimension of merchandise and its subdimensions was confirmed to be unidimensional respectively, have a construct validity, and nomological validity which the VMD dimensions supposed to have a positive correlation with the dependent variable. The subdimensions of product assortment, brand fame and information provision proved to have a positive effect on the attitude toward the VMD. It could be interpreted that the more plentiful the product and brand assortment of the mall is, the more likely the shoppers to favor it. Brand fame and information provision as well affect the VMD attitude, which means that the more famous the brand, the more likely the shoppers would trust and feel familiar with the mall, and the plentifully and visually presented information could have the shopper have a favorable attitude toward the store VMD. Third, it turned out to be that merchandising cue of product recommendation and hyperlinks affect the VMD attitude. This could be interpreted that recommended products could reduce the uncertainty related with the purchase decision, and the hyperlinks to relevant products would help the shopper save the cognitive effort exerted into the information search and gathering, which could lead to a favorable attitude to the VMD. This study tried to sheds some new light on the VMD of online store by reviewing the variables mentioned to be relevant with offline VMD in the existing literatures, and tried to link the VMD components from the perspective of AIDA model. The effect size of the VMD dimensions on the attitude was in the order of the merchandise, the store design and the merchandising cues.It is said that an internet has an unlimited place for display, however, the virtual store is not unlimited since the consumer has a limited amount of cognitive ability to process the external information and internal memory. Particularly, the shoppers are likely to face some difficulties in decision making on account of too many alternative and information overloads. Therefore, the internet shopping mall manager should take into consideration the cost of information search on the part of the consumer, to establish the optimal product placements and search routes. An efficient store composition would be possible by reducing the psychological burdens and cognitive efforts exerted to information search and alternatives evaluation. The store image is in most part determined by the product category and its brand it deals in. The results of this study support this proposition that the merchandise is most important to the VMD attitude than other components, the manager is required to take a strategic approach to VMD. The internet users are getting more accustomed and more knowledgeable about the internet media and more likely to accept the internet as a shopping channel as the period of time during which they use the internet to shop become longer. The web merchandiser should be aware that the product introduction using a moving pictures and a bulletin board become more important in order to present the interactive product information visually and communicate with customers more actively, therefore leading to making the quantity and quality of product information more rich.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.208-218
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• 2010

Internet has grown fast and become one of the most important retail channels now. Various types of Internet retailers, hereafter etailers, have been introduced so far and as one type of Internet shopping mall, 'surrogate Internet shopping mall' has been prosperous and attracting consumers in the domestic market. Surrogate Internet shopping mall is a unique type of etailer that globally purchases well-known brand goods that are not imported in the market, completes delivery in the favor of individual buyers, and collects fees for these specific services. The consumers, who are usually interested in purchasing high-end and unique but not eligible brands, have difficulties to purchase these items overseas directly from the retailers or brands in other countries due to worries of payment failure and no address available for their usually domestic only delivery. In Korea, both numbers of surrogate Internet shopping malls and the magnitude of sales have been growing rapidly up to more than 430 active malls and 500 billion Korean won in 2008 since the population of consumers who want this agent shopping service is also expending. This etail business concept is originated from 'surrogate-mediated purchase' and this type of shopping agent has existed in many different forms and also in wide ranges of context level for quite a long time. As marketers face their individual buyers' representatives instead of a direct contact with them in many occasions, the impact of surrogate shoppers on consumer's decision making has been enormously important and many scholars have explored various range of agent's impact on consumer's purchase decisions in marketing and psychology field. However, not much rigorous research in the Internet commerce has been conveyed yet. Moreover, since as one of the shopping agent surrogate Internet shopping malls specifically connect overseas brands or retailers to domestic consumers, one specific character of the mall's, image of surrogate buying country, where surrogate purchases are conducted in, may play an important role to form consumers' attitude and purchase intention toward products. Furthermore it also possibly affects various dimensions of perceived risk in consumer's information processing. However, though tremendous researches have been carried exploring the effects of diverse dimensions of country of origin, related studies in Internet context has been rarely executed. There have been some studies that prove the positive impact of country of origin on consumer's evaluations as one of information clues in product manufacture descriptions, yet studies detecting the relationship between country image of surrogate buying origin and product evaluations rarely undertaken regarding this specific mall type. Thus, the authors have found it well-worth investigating in this specific retail channel and explored systematic relationships among focal constructs and elaborated their different paths. The authors have proven that country image of surrogate buying origin in the mall, where surrogate malls purchase products in and brings them from for buyers, not only has a positive effect on consumers' product evaluations including attitude and purchase intention but also has a negative effect on all three dimensions of perceived risk: product-related risk, shipping-related risk, and post-purchase risk. Specifically among all the perceived risk, product-related risk which is arisen from high uncertainty of product performance is most affected (${\beta}$= -.30) by negative country image of surrogate buying origin, and also shipping-related risk (${\beta}$= -.18) and post-purchase risk (${\beta}$= -.15) get influenced in order. Its direct effects on product attitude (${\beta}$= .10) and purchase intention (${\beta}$= .14) are also secured. Each of perceived risk dimension is proven to have a negative effect on purchase intention through product attitude as a mediator (${\beta}$= -.57: product-related risk ${\rightarrow}$ product attitude; ${\beta}$= -.24: shipping-related risk ${\rightarrow}$ product attitude; ${\beta}$= -.44: post-purchase risk ${\rightarrow}$ product attitude) as well. From the additional analysis, the paths of consumers' information processing are shown to be different based on their levels of product knowledge. While novice consumers with low level of knowledge consider only perceived risk important, expert consumers with high level of knowledge take both the country image, where surrogate services are conducted in, and perceived risk seriously to build their attitudes and formulate decisions toward products more delicately and systematically, which is in line with previous studies. This study suggests several pieces of academic and practical advice. Precisely, country image of surrogate buying origin does affect on consumer's risk perceptions and behavioral consequences. Therefore a careful selection of surrogate buying origin is recommended. Furthermore, reducing consumers' risk level is required to blossom this new type of retail business whether its consumer are novices or experts. Additionally, since consumer take different paths of elaborating information based on their knowledge levels, sophisticated marketing approaches to each group of consumers are required. For novice buyers strong devices for risk mitigation are needed to induce them to form better attitudes and for experts selections of better and advanced countries as surrogate buying origins are advised while endorsement strategy for the site might work as a reliable information clue to all consumers to mitigate the barriers to purchase goods online. The authors have also explained that the study suffers from some limitations, including generalizability. In future studies, tests of and comparisons among different types of etailers with relevant constructs are recommended to broaden the findings.