• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.29-42
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• 2017

The market for Home Meal Replacement (HMR), which is simple to cook and replace home cooking, is growing every year since customers need to find convenience and speed in purchasing, cooking, and consuming food. In addition, the purchase of HMR through online and mobile is increasing because convenience of purchasing through e-Commerce is growing. However, there are difficulties in analyzing complaints of customers who do not directly express their dissatisfaction with companies that sell products through online and mobile. Therefore, this study examines the influential relationship between customer's characteristics, dissatisfaction factors, complaint behavior, and repurchase intention of 20s who have dissatisfaction experience of purchasing HMR through online or mobile using SPSS and R. In addition, we attempt to analyze the degree of perceived dissatisfaction and its relevance even though customers did not directly experience dissatisfaction factors. As a result, it is meaningful to extend the study of customer dissatisfaction that is rarely handled in the existing HMR research, and to raise the understanding of customers for the management of complaints.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.7
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• pp.239-259
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• 2001

The purpose of this study is to analyze service quality factors that consumers perceive during their purchasing product on Internet Shopping Mall. The study defines the characteristic quality dimensions of Internet Shopping Mall by adding three dimensions consisting of convenience, security and entertainment to PZB's SERVQUAL scale. Consumers' purchase process on Internet Shopping Mall is examined by finding the relation between their perceived risk factor and repurchase intention. The study results show that consumers' higher appraisal degree on service quality means their higher repurchase intentions, their lower perceived risks degree. The repurchase intentions and the perceived risks degree have negative correlation. The more consumers have experienced buying on Internet Shopping Mall, the higher consumer assess service quality, they have higher repurchase intention and lower perceived risk. The most basic contribution is that new service quality dimensions, which is able to clarify service quality on Cyber Mall, is identified with the established PZB(I988; 1991)'s SERVQUAL dimensions.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.13 no.10
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• pp.101-108
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• 2015

Purpose - The convenience store business sector in South Korea has contributed to economic growth and job creation, and the growth potential of this market segment remains very high. In addition, service value is a more important factor than price in determining purchase intention. Research in the convenience store market is relatively very low compared to other retail sectors. In particular, research on service quality for the convenience of retailers who examine and analyze customer behavior and service quality factors used in the convenience store side of the situation is very inadequate. We have investigated the relationship of store service quality, service satisfaction, and store loyalty. In addition, we have examined the way service value moderates the relationship among these variables. Research design, data, and methodology - The questionnaire was developed using modified and supplementary questions based on the KD-SQS and RSQS models. The study suggested a theoretical model composed of 15 hypotheses on the relations between theoretic variables, and surveys conducted with consumers in discount stores in the Seoul and Gyunggi Metropolitan area in order to verify the hypotheses. We used the SPSS/PC statistical packages to analyze the results. The number of surveys used was 227. Moreover, a structural equating model was also used to analyze the reliability and validity of the composing elements and to verify the suggested hypotheses. Results - The overall results of this study are as follows. First, all service quality elements have a significant effect on service satisfaction. Second, all service quality elements have a significant effect on store loyalty. Third, service satisfaction has a significant effect on store loyalty. Finally, when the participants were divided into high and low service value the results of the multiple regression analyses showed that only the relationship between policy of service quality and satisfaction, and human interaction and policy of service quality and loyalty were significant. The implications are discussed based on the findings of the study. Conclusions - First, through direct hypotheses testing, we confirmed that the convenience service quality positively impacts the service satisfaction and loyalty of buyers. In particular, the reliability, origin benefit, and promotion were found to have more influence on satisfaction and loyalty of consumers of a convenience store. Further, for the service quality of the convenience for the consumer loyalty, greater human interaction was a high-value and statistically significantly higher than the degree of improvement in consumer loyalty. This underscores the importance of education and human services management of employees working in a convenience store. In particular, frequent changes in personnel generate results that negatively impact loyalty with customers. These results may lead to a serious problem in the economics of the store. Therefore, it should enhance the value of services through the establishment of training and compensation for employees. In addition, a certain educational level is required as well as a basis for compensation and retention.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.27-48
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• 2011

The Chinese counterfeits has begun to gain great attention recently because of the drastic increase in its volume. The consumption of counterfeit harms to manufacturer who spend millions of dollars to create and develop new product. The counterfeits in Chinese can cause international dispute and lower national reputation. The purpose of this study were to examine if the buyers of counterfeits tend to care more about interpersonal relationship than non-buyers among Chinese. Data were gathered by surveying Chinese consumer living in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou metropolitan area using convenient sampling, and 480 questionnaires were used in the statistical analysis. In analyzing data, descriptive statistics, factor analysis, structural equation modeling with AMOS were conducted. The results of this study were follows, first, attitude toward counterfeits was classified into three factors such as interpersonal relationship, perception, and involvement. It is general belief that attitudes toward counterfeits were correlated with on brand attachment, however this study show that the buyers of counterfeits tended to purchase counterfeit goods as more alternatives of genuine(original) product than non-buyers. Perhaps, the buyers of counterfeits tended to have lower consumer ethics than non-buyers because they value counterfeit high. It is generally accepted that both a producer and a buyer violate the laws, but they are rather generous for buyer. The results of this study suggest consumers' attitude towards counterfeit need to be changed, following consumer education and strict law enforcement. Based on these results, global brand marketing strategies for luxury goods were suggested.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.11-23
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• 2009

HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) is a 3.5-generation asynchronous mobile communications service based on the third generation of W-CDMA. In Korea, it is mainly provided in through videophone service. Because of the diffusion of more powerful and diversified services, along with steep advances in mobile communications technology, consumers demand a wide range of choices. However, because of the variety of technologies, which tend to overflow the market regardless of consumer preferences, consumers feel increasingly confused. Therefore, we should not adopt strategies that focus only on developing new technology on the assumption that new technologies are next-generation projects. Instead, we should understand the process by which consumers accept new forms of technology and devise schemes to lower market entry barriers through strategies that enable developers to understand and provide what consumers really want. In the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use are suggested as the most important factors affecting the attitudes of people adopting new technologies (Davis, 1989; Taylor and Todd, 1995; Venkatesh, 2000; Lee et al., 2004). Perceived usefulness is the degree to which a person believes that a particular technology will enhance his or her job performance. Perceived ease of use is the degree of subjective belief that using a particular technology will require little physical and mental effort (Davis, 1989; Morris and Dillon, 1997; Venkatesh, 2000). Perceived pleasure and perceived usefulness have been shown to clearly affect attitudes toward accepting technology (Davis et al., 1992). For example, pleasure in online shopping has been shown to positively impact consumers' attitudes toward online sellers (Eighmey and McCord, 1998; Mathwick, 2002; Jarvenpaa and Todd, 1997). The perceived risk of customers is a subjective risk, which is distinguished from an objective probabilistic risk. Perceived risk includes a psychological risk that consumers perceive when they choose brands, stores, and methods of purchase to obtain a particular item. The ability of an enterprise to revolutionize products depends on the effective acquisition of knowledge about new products (Bierly and Chakrabarti, 1996; Rothwell and Dodgson, 1991). Knowledge acquisition is the ability of a company to perceive the value of novelty and technology of the outside (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990), to evaluate the outside technology that has newly appeared (Arora and Gambaradella, 1994), and to predict the future evolution of technology accurately (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990). Consumer innovativeness is the degree to which an individual adopts innovation earlier than others in the social system (Lee, Ahn, and Ha, 2001; Gatignon and Robertson, 1985). That is, it shows how fast and how easily consumers adopt new ideas. Innovativeness is regarded as important because it has a significant effect on whether consumers adopt new products and on how fast they accept new products (Midgley and Dowling, 1978; Foxall, 1988; Hirschman, 1980). We conducted cross-national comparative research using the TAM model, which empirically verified the relationship between the factors that affect attitudes - perceived usefulness, ease of use, perceived pleasure, perceived risk, innovativeness, and perceived level of knowledge management - and attitudes toward HSDPA service. We also verified the relationship between attitudes and usage intention for the purpose of developing more effective methods of management for HSDPA service providers. For this research, 346 questionnaires were distributed among 350 students in the Republic of Korea. Because 26 of the returned questionnaires were inconsistent or had missing data, 320 questionnaires were used in the hypothesis tests. In UK, 192 of the total 200 questionnaires were retrieved, and two incomplete ones were discarded, bringing the total to 190 questionnaires used for statistical analysis. The results of the overall model analysis are as follows: Republic of Korea x2=333.27(p=0.0), NFI=0.88, NNFI=0.88, CFI=0.91, IFI=0.91, RMR=0.054, GFI=0.90, AGFI=0.84, UK x2=176.57(p=0.0), NFI=0.88, NNFI=0.90, CFI=0.93, IFI=0.93, RMR=0.062, GFI=0.90, AGFI=0.84. From the results of the hypothesis tests of Korean consumers about the relationship between factors that affect intention to use HSDPA services and attitudes, we can conclude that perceived usefulness, ease of use, pleasure, a high level of knowledge management, and innovativeness promote positive attitudes toward HSDPA mobile phones. However, ease of use and perceived pleasure did not have a direct effect on intention to use HSDPA service. This may have resulted from the fact that the use of video phones is not necessary for everyday life yet. Moreover, it has been shown that attitudes toward HSDPA video phones are directly correlated with usage intention, which means that perceived usefulness, ease of use, pleasure, a high level of knowledge management, and innovativeness. These relationships form the basis of the intention to buy, contributing to a situation in which consumers decide to choose carefully. A summary of the results of the hypothesis tests of European consumers revealed that perceived usefulness, pleasure, risk, and the level of knowledge management are factors that affect the formation of attitudes, while ease of use and innovativeness do not have an effect on attitudes. In particular, with regard to the effect value, perceived usefulness has the largest effect on attitudes, followed by pleasure and knowledge management. On the contrary, perceived risk has a smaller effect on attitudes. In the Asian model, ease of use and perceived pleasure were found not to have a direct effect on intention to use. However, because attitudes generally affect the intention to use, perceived usefulness, pleasure, risk, and knowledge management may be considered key factors in attitude development from which usage intention arises. In conclusion, perceived usefulness, pleasure, and the level of knowledge management have an effect on attitude formation in both Asian and European consumers, and such attitudes shape these consumers' intention to use. Furthermore, the hypotheses that ease of use and perceived pleasure affect usage intention are rejected. However, ease of use, perceived risk, and innovativeness showed different results. Perceived risk had no effect on attitude formation among Asians, while ease of use and innovativeness had no effect on attitudes among Europeans.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.85-111
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• 2012

Introduction : The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between perceptual characteristics of consumers and intent of relational continuance for PB(Private Brand) products in discount stores. This study was conducted as an empirical study based on survey. For the empirical study, factors of PB products as characteristics perceived by consumers such as perceived quality, store image, brand image and perceived value were deduced from preceding studies. The effect of such factors on intent of relational continuance mediated by brand trust and brand equity of PB products was structurally examined. Research Model : Based on theory analysis and hypotheses, constructed a Structural Equation Model(SEM). The research model is shown in Figure 1. Research Method : This paper is based on s qualitative study of selected literature and empirical data. The survey for empirical study was carried out on consumers in Gyeonggi and Busan between January 2012 and May 2012. 300 surveys were distributed and 253 (84.3%) of them were returned. After excluding omissions and insincere responses, 245 surveys (81.6%) were used for final analysis as effective samples. Result : First of all, the Reliability was carried out for instrument used. The lower limit of 0.7 for Cronbach's Alpha as suggested by Hair et al. (1998). And Construct validity was established by carrying out exploratory factor analysis by Varimax rotation for all. Four factor result for the consumer's perceptual characteristics of PB Products, two mediating factors and one dependent factor. All constructs included in research framework have acceptable validity and reliability. Table 1 shows the factor loading, eigen value, explained variance and Cronbach's alpha for each factor. In order to assure validity of constructs, I implemented Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), using AMOS 20.0. In confirmatory factor analysis, researcher can take control over the specification of indicators for each factor by hypothesizing that a specific factor is loaded with the relevant indicators. Moreover, CFA is particularly useful in the validation of scale for the measurement of specific construct. CFA result summarized Table 2 shows that the fit measures of all constructs fulfill the recommended level and loadings are significant. To test causal relationship between constructs in the research model, used AMOS 20.0 that provides a graphic module as method for analysing Structural Equation Modeling. The result of hypothesis test is shown in Table 3. As a result of empirical study, perceived quality, brand image and perceived value as selected attributes for PB products showed significantly positive (+) effect on brand trust and brand equity. Furthermore, brand trust and brand equity showed significantly positive (+) effect on intent of relational continuance. However, store image of discount stores selling the PB products was analyzed to have positive (+) effect on brand trust and no significant effect on brand equity. Discussion : Based on the results of this study, the relationship between overall quality, store image, brand image and value perceived by consumers about PB products and intent of relational continuance was structurally verified as being mediated by brand trust and brand equity. Looking at the results, a strategic approach that maximizes brand trust and equity value for PB products by large discount stores is required on top of basic efforts to improve quality, brand image and value of PB products in order to maximize consumer's intent of relational continuance and to continuously attract repeated purchase of products.

• 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.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.33-58
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• 2008

Previous research has presupposed that the evaluation of consumer who received any recovery after experiencing product failure should be better than the evaluation of consumer who did not receive any recovery. The major purposes of this article are to examine impacts of product defect failures rather than service failures, and to explore effects of recovery on postrecovery product attitudes. First, this article deals with the occurrence of severe and unsevere failure and corresponding service recovery toward tangible products rather than intangible services. Contrary to intangible services, purchase and usage are separable for tangible products. This difference makes it clear that executing an recovery strategy toward tangible products is not plausible right after consumers find out product failures. The consumers may think about backgrounds and causes for the unpleasant events during the time gap between product failure and recovery. The deliberation may dilutes positive effects of recovery efforts. The recovery strategies which are provided to consumers experiencing product failures can be classified into three types. A recovery strategy can be implemented to provide consumers with a new product replacing the old defective product, a complimentary product for free, a discount at the time of the failure incident, or a coupon that can be used on the next visit. This strategy is defined as "a rewarding effort." Meanwhile a product failure may arise in exchange for its benefit. Then the product provider can suggest a detail explanation that the defect is hard to escape since it relates highly to the specific advantage to the product. The strategy may be called as "a strengthening effort." Another possible strategy is to recover negative attitude toward own brand by giving prominence to the disadvantages of a competing brand rather than the advantages of its own brand. The strategy is reflected as "a weakening effort." This paper emphasizes that, in order to confirm its effectiveness, a recovery strategy should be compared to being nothing done in response to the product failure. So the three types of recovery efforts is discussed in comparison to the situation involving no recovery effort. The strengthening strategy is to claim high relatedness of the product failure with another advantage, and expects the two-sidedness to ease consumers' complaints. The weakening strategy is to emphasize non-aversiveness of product failure, even if consumers choose another competitive brand. The two strategies can be effective in restoring to the original state, by providing plausible motives to accept the condition of product failure or by informing consumers of non-responsibility in the failure case. However the two may be less effective strategies than the rewarding strategy, since it tries to take care of the rehabilitation needs of consumers. Especially, the relative effect between the strengthening effort and the weakening effort may differ in terms of the severity of the product failure. A consumer who realizes a highly severe failure is likely to attach importance to the property which caused the failure. This implies that the strengthening effort would be less effective under the condition of high product severity. Meanwhile, the failing property is not diagnostic information in the condition of low failure severity. Consumers would not pay attention to non-diagnostic information, and with which they are not likely to change their attitudes. This implies that the strengthening effort would be more effective under the condition of low product severity. A 2 (product failure severity: high or low) X 4 (recovery strategies: rewarding, strengthening, weakening, or doing nothing) between-subjects design was employed. The particular levels of product failure severity and the types of recovery strategies were determined after a series of expert interviews. The dependent variable was product attitude after the recovery effort was provided. Subjects were 284 consumers who had an experience of cosmetics. Subjects were first given a product failure scenario and were asked to rate the comprehensibility of the failure scenario, the probability of raising complaints against the failure, and the subjective severity of the failure. After a recovery scenario was presented, its comprehensibility and overall evaluation were measured. The subjects assigned to the condition of no recovery effort were exposed to a short news article on the cosmetic industry. Next, subjects answered filler questions: 42 items of the need for cognitive closure and 16 items of need-to-evaluate. In the succeeding page a subject's product attitude was measured on an five-item, six-point scale, and a subject's repurchase intention on an three-item, six-point scale. After demographic variables of age and sex were asked, ten items of the subject's objective knowledge was checked. The results showed that the subjects formed more favorable evaluations after receiving rewarding efforts than after receiving either strengthening or weakening efforts. This is consistent with Hoffman, Kelley, and Rotalsky (1995) in that a tangible service recovery could be more effective that intangible efforts. Strengthening and weakening efforts also were effective compared to no recovery effort. So we found that generally any recovery increased products attitudes. The results hint us that a recovery strategy such as strengthening or weakening efforts, although it does not contain a specific reward, may have an effect on consumers experiencing severe unsatisfaction and strong complaint. Meanwhile, strengthening and weakening efforts were not expected to increase product attitudes under the condition of low severity of product failure. We can conclude that only a physical recovery effort may be recognized favorably as a firm's willingness to recover its fault by consumers experiencing low involvements. Results of the present experiment are explained in terms of the attribution theory. This article has a limitation that it utilized fictitious scenarios. Future research deserves to test a realistic effect of recovery for actual consumers. Recovery involves a direct, firsthand experience of ex-users. Recovery does not apply to non-users. The experience of receiving recovery efforts can be relatively more salient and accessible for the ex-users than for non-users. A recovery effort might be more likely to improve product attitude for the ex-users than for non-users. Also the present experiment did not include consumers who did not have an experience of the products and who did not perceive the occurrence of product failure. For the non-users and the ignorant consumers, the recovery efforts might lead to decreased product attitude and purchase intention. This is because the recovery trials may give an opportunity for them to notice the product failure.

• Journal of Ginseng Culture
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• v.2
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• pp.71-83
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• 2020

College students are the potential income classes preparing for income activities and are the main consumers of the future that are very important. In order to understand the current state of ginseng-related consumption culture of young consumers, this study wanted to examine university students' attitudes toward ginseng-related products and services in the future, and to find out their purchasing status, satisfaction, and intent to purchase them. In doing so, we looked at the relative influence of the relevant variables that affect the intent of the purchase. As a result, the variables that affect college student consumers' intention to purchase ginseng-related products were shown in the order of their reliability, economy, purchasing experience, subjective interest, monthly income, monthly allowance, pride in ginseng, and age. Of these, most of the variables had positive effects, but the average monthly income, monthly allowance, and age had negative effects. In other words, the higher the reliability, economy, and self-esteem of ginseng, the higher the willingness to buy ginseng, the higher the subjective interest in ginseng, the higher the age, the lower the monthly allowance, and the lower the income, the lower the willingness to buy ginseng. To promote college students' consumption of ginseng products, it is necessary to cut prices for the younger generation, enhance the quality of the products for the younger generation, improve the taste to overcome the negative aspects of rejecting the bitter and bitter taste, and, above all, induce consumers' attention. It is also necessary to expand accessibility through the development of convenient and easy-to-eat products for young people and the expansion of sales outlets. Recently, young consumers are interested in new products they have never experienced before, products that are good to certify because of their unique design or packaging, and retro products that stimulate nostalgia in the past, so they need to promote and provide information related to consumption of ginseng products in this regard. Considering the practicality and convenience of consumers, we propose consideration of personal consumers' taste curation services, which reflect their preference for products that are convenient to carry with them in line with various living environments, and can have synergy with other products.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.141-173
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• 2007

The study examines how the environmental factors of store influence service brand personality and repurchase intention in the service environment. The service industry has been experiencing the intensified competition with the industry's continuous growth and the influence from rapid technological advancement. Under the circumstances, it has become ever more important for the brand competitiveness to be distinctively recognized against competition. A brand needs to be distinguished and differentiated from competing companies because they are all engaged in the similar environment of the service industry. The differentiation of brand achievement has become increasingly important to highlight certain brand functions to include emotional, self-expressive, and symbolic functions since the importance of such functions has been further emphasized in promoting consumption activities. That is the recent role of brand personality that has been emphasized in the service industry. In other words, customers now freely and actively express their personalities or egos in consumption activities, taking an important role in construction of a brand asset. Hence, the study suggests that it is necessary to disperse the recognition and acknowledgement that the maintenance of the existing customers contributes more to boost repurchase intention when it is compared to the efforts to create new customers, particularly in the service industry. Meanwhile, the store itself can offer a unique environment that may influence the consumer's purchase decision. Consumers interact with store environments in the process of,virtually, all household purchase they make (Sarel 1981). Thus, store environments may encourage customers to purchase. The roles that store environments play are to provide informational cues to customers about the store and goods and communicate messages to stimulate consumers' emotions. The store environments differentiate the store from competing stores and build a unique service brand personality. However, the existing studies related to brand in the service industry mostly concentrated on the relationship between the quality of service and customer satisfaction, and they are mostly generalized while the connective studies focused on brand personality. Such approaches show limitations and are insufficient to investigate on the relationship between store environment and brand personality in the service industry. Accordingly, the study intends to identify the level of contribution to the establishment of brand personality made by the store's physical environments that influence on the specific brand characteristics depending on the type of service. The study also intends to identify what kind of relationships with brand personality exists with brand personality while being influenced by store environments. In addition, the study intends to make meaningful suggestions to better direct marketing efforts by identifying whether a brand personality makes a positive influence to induce an intention for repurchase. For this study, the service industry is classified into four categories based on to the characteristics of service: experimental-emotional service, emotional -credible service, credible-functional service, and functional-experimental service. The type of business with the most frequent customer contact is determined for each service type and the enterprise with the highest brand value in each service sector based on the report made by the Korea Management Association. They are designated as the representative of each category. The selected representatives are a fast-food store (experimental-emotional service), a cinema house (emotional-credible service), a bank (credible-functional service), and discount store (functional-experimental service). The survey was conducted for the four selected brands to represent each service category among consumers who are experienced users of the designated stores in Seoul Metropolitan City and Gyeonggi province via written questionnaires in order to verify the suggested assumptions in the study. In particular, the survey adopted 15 scales, which represent each characteristic factor, among the 42 unique characteristics developed by Jennifer Aaker(1997) to assess the brand personality of each service brand. SPSS for Windows Release 12.0 and LISREL were used in the analysis of data verification. The methodology of the structural equation model was used for the study and the pivotal findings are as follows. 1) The environmental factors ware classified as design factors, ambient factors, and social factors. Therefore, the validity of measurement scale of Baker et al. (1994) was proved. 2) The service brand personalities were subdivided as sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and ruggedness, which makes the use of the brand personality scales by Jennifer Aaker(1997) appropriate in the service industry as well. 3) One-way ANOVA analysis on the scales of store environment and service brand personality showed that there exist statistically significant differences in each service category. For example, the social factors were highest in discount stores, while the ambient factors and design factors were highest in fast-food stores. The discount stores were highest in the sincerity and excitement, while the highest point for banks was in the competence and ruggedness, and the highest point for fast-food stores was in the sophistication, The consumers will make a different respond to the physical environment of stores and service brand personality that are inherent to the corresponding service interface. Hence, the customers will make a different decision-making when dealing with different service categories. In this aspect, the relationships of variables in the proposed hypothesis appear to work in a different way depending on the exposed service category. 4) The store environment factors influenced on service brand personalities differently by category of service. The factors of store's physical environment are transferred to a brand and were verified to strengthen service brand personalities. In particular, the level of influence on the service brand personality by physical environment differs depending on service category or dimension, which indicates that there is a need to apply a different style of management to a different service category or dimension. It signifies that there needs to be a brand strategy established in order to positively influence the relationship with consumers by utilizing an appropriate brand personality factor depending on different characteristics by service category or dimension. 5) The service brand personalities influenced on the repurchase intention. Especially, the largest influence was made in the sophistication dimension of service brand personality scale; the unique and characteristically appropriate arrangement of physical environment will make customers stay in the service environment for a long time and will lead to give a positive influence on the repurchase intention. 6) The store environment factors influenced on the repurchase intention. Particularly, the largest influence was made on the social factors of store environment. The most intriguing finding is that the service factor among all other environment factors gives the biggest influence to the repurchase intention in most of all service types except fast-food stores. Such result indicates that the customers pay attention to how much the employees try to provide a quality service when they make an evaluation on the service brand. At the same time, it also indicates that the personal factor is directly transmitted to the construction of brand personality. The employees' attitude and behavior are the determinants to establish a service brand personality in the process of enhancing service interface. Hence, there should be a reinforced search for a method to efficiently manage the service staff who has a direct contact with customers in order to make an affirmative improvement of the customers' brand evaluation at the service interface. The findings suggest several managerial implications. 1) Results from the empirical study indicated that store environment factors have a strong positive impact on a service brand personality. To increase customers' repurchase intention of a service brand, the management is required to effectively manage store environment factors and create a friendly brand personality based on the corresponding service environment. 2) Mangers and researchers must understand and recognize that the store environment elements are important marketing tools, and that brand personality influences on consumers' repurchase intention. Based on such result of the study, a service brand could be utilized as an efficient measure to achieve a differentiation by enforcing the elements that are most influential among all other store environments for each service category. Therefore, brand personality established involving various store environments will further reinforce the relationship with customers through the elevated brand identification of which utilization to induce repurchase decision can be used as an entry barrier. 3) The study identified the store environment as a component of service brand personality for the store's effective communication with consumers. For this, all communication channels should be maintained with consistency and an integrated marketing communication should be executed to efficiently approach to a larger number of customers. Mangers and researchers must find strategies for aligning decisions about store environment elements with the retailers' marketing and store personality objectives. All ambient, design, and social factors need to be orchestrated so that consumers can take an appropriate store personality. In this study, the induced results from the previous studies were extended to the service industry so as to identify the customers' decision making process that leads to repurchase intention and a result similar to those of the previous studies. The findings suggested several theoretical and managerial implications. However, the situation that only one service brand served as the subject of analysis for each service category, and the situation that correlations among store environment elements were not identified, as well as the problem of representation in selection of samples should be considered and supplemented in the future when further studies are conducted. In addition, various antecedents and consequences of brand personality must be looked at in the aspect of the service environment for further research.