• Asia pacific journal of information systems
• /
• v.18 no.3
• /
• pp.67-90
• /
• 2008

Prior to making choices among online products and services, consumers often search online product reviews written by other consumers. Online product reviews have great influences on consumer behavior because they are believed to be more reliable than information provided by sellers. However, ever-increasing lists of product reviews make it difficult for consumers to find the right information efficiently. A customized search mechanism is a method to provide personalized information which fits the user's requirements. This study examines effects of a customized search mechanism and perceived similarity between consumers and product reviewers on consumer behaviors. More specifically, we address the following research questions: (1) Can a customized search mechanism increase perceived similarity between product review authors and readers? (2) Are product reviews perceived as more credible when product reviews were written by the authors perceived similar to them? (3) Does credibility of product reviews have a positive impact on acceptance of product reviews? (4) Does acceptance of product reviews have an influence on purchase intention of the readers? To examine these research questions, a lab experiment with a between-subject factor (whether a customized search mechanism is provided or not) design was employed. In order to enhance mundane realism and increase generalizability of the findings, the experiment sites were built based on a real online store, cherrya.com (http://www.cherrya.com/). Sixty participants were drawn from a pool that consisted of undergraduate and graduate students in a large university. Participation was voluntary; all the participants received 5,000 won to encourage their motivation and involvement in the experiment tasks. In addition, 15 participants, who selected by a random draw, received 30,000 won to actually purchase the product that he or she decided to buy during the experiment. Of the 60 participants, 25 were male and 35 were female. In examining the homogeneity between the two groups, the results of t-tests revealed no significant difference in gender, age, academic years, online shopping experience, and Internet usage. To test our research model, we completed tests of the measurement models and the structural models using PLS Graph version 3.00. The analysis confirmed individual item reliability, internal consistency, and discriminant validity of measurements. The results show that participants feel more credible when product reviews were written by the authors perceived similar to them, credibility of product reviews have a positive impact on acceptance of product reviews, and acceptance of product reviews have an influence on purchase intention of the readers. However, a customized search mechanism did not increase perceived similarity between product review authors and readers. The results imply that there is an urgent need to develop a better customized search tool in order to increase perceived similarity between product review authors and readers.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
• /
• v.17 no.4
• /
• pp.1-29
• /
• 2007

The brand-based online community recently plays an important roles for consumers to facilitates searching and sharing information among them. Firms often find such a brand community as a critical channel to gain collective intelligence for developing new ideas and products. As a new web platform such as web 2.0 has been introduced, consumers could more easily participate in the new social networks created by sharing mutual value and belief among themselves. Accordingly firms began to recognize potentials of online brand assets and pay attention to the importance of online brand community loyalty. Previous research related to online community tends to focus on identifying the antecedents of community loyalty and their subsequent impacts on brand. They, however, tend to neglect the importance of individual characteristics of online community users. As integrating the fragmented variables with an individual characteristics, therefore, this study reexamined the impacts of interactivity, information, reward, and personalization services provided by an online brand community on the sense of community, community loyalty, and brand attitude. Also, this study investigated how users' individual characteristics(need for cognition: NFC) can play moderating roles among the variables identified in the previous research. A field survey was administrated and 671 valid samples were collected. In order to test the hypothesis we conducted the multi-sample structural equation modeling(MSEM) between two groups(a group with high vs. a group with low level of NFC). Results show that previously identified variables such as interactivity, information, reward, and personalization services have significant effects on the sense of community as previous research demonstrated. Subsequently, the sense of community positively influences the community loyalty and brand attitude. However, when considering the NFC as a moderating variable, we found that the effect of interactivity and reward service on the sense of community was stronger for a group with a lower level of NFC compared to a group with a higher level, while the effect of information providing service on the sense of community was stronger for a group with a higher level of NFC compared to a group with a lower level. This research revealed that NFC can affect the degree of individual perception on the sense of community which has been considered as an important indicator for the community loyalty and brand attitude. Hence, when firms developing customer relation strategy through building an online brand community, they need to reflect customers' NFC and accordingly provide varying degree of interactivity, information, reward, and personalization services.

• Journal of Korean Library and Information Science Society
• /
• v.35 no.1
• /
• pp.187-213
• /
• 2004

Nowadays changes of financial environment are internalization, generalization and autonomous system. The most importance in a struggle for existence is to secure a customer. The purpose of this study is to analyze whether information on financial service accounts have fully offered over internet, which information consumers needed in buying financial service accounts and whether consumer have satisfied with offered information Through this, to enhance the efficiency of financial information offered to consumer over internet and to explore the consumer demanding information model by finding the problems of offering financial information. The specific purpose of this study me following; 1. to investigate the actual situation which consumers behaviour of information providing and choosing about financial accounts items on internet. 2. to analyze the relationship between the level of consumer information need about financial information and rotated variables. 3. to analyze the relationship between the level of consumer information satisfaction about financial information over internet and related variables. 4. to analyze the new information financial service and contents. 5. to analyze the informatic information and financial service accounts.

• Journal of Families and Better Life
• /
• v.34 no.3
• /
• pp.15-26
• /
• 2016

Food is a kind of unconditional element for the health and survival of humanity. Eating is the most principle desire for humans among others, which can make humans feel stability and pleasure when the desire is well satisfied. The attention to food safety is increasing and food safety accidents are happening constantly, which makes the anxiety to food safety become more serious. Especially after the WTO, the floating of food hazards between countries are increasing, which makes the problems of food safety not just limited to inland but has become a matter of common interest internationally in this liberalization era. Therefore, institutional preparation and persistent management and supervision are necessary for increasing dietary life satisfaction as well as securing food safety. Meanwhile, the consumers also need to understand and trust the food safety information, and have the ability of personally pursuing a safe diet. In this study, sentiment index about food safety and dietary satisfaction were centered on Korean consumers and the factors having an effect on dietary satisfaction were analyzed. Moreover, whether the reliance to food safety information had a moderating effect on the sensory level of food safety and satisfaction to dietary food was also confirmed. The main results were different with those concluded by J. Yun and S. Joo (2014). The sensory level of food safety was decided by the reliance to food production distribution provision safety, anxiety to food varieties, and food token. The reliance to food production distribution provision safety was lower than the average level. The anxiety to food varieties was slightly higher than the average level. The reliance to food safety information was generally lower than the medium level which showed the distrust to food safety information. The satisfaction of diet by the consumers showed a slightly lower level than the average level. In addition, the reliance to food safety information had a moderating effect on the sentiment index about food safety and dietary satisfaction. Therefore, the consumer organizations or the government should actively expand various consumer education related to food safety in order to apprehend the concrete variables which can have effects on the satisfaction of diet and transform the precise information into accurate knowledge.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
• /
• v.20 no.8
• /
• pp.1517-1523
• /
• 2016

The global medical tourism industry including Asian market has been activating recently. That is as medical tourists are motivated to seek the higher quality of healthcare with lower costs, as well as of travel. The consumers in this field tend to need customized services of medical tourism. It is needed that the consumers get customized information on medical services and traveling, the clinics and hospitals resolve the issues of offering translation and luring medical tourists from overseas, and the guides, who offer tour and translation service, provide the consumers and the clinics with customized services so that they get the services needed for one another. This research studies the Offline to Online, called O2O, matching platform based on global clinics, which connects medical facilities, patients, and guides for traveling and language services. It presents the customized marketing plans by utilizing customers' experiences from medical services and traveling they use.

• International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
• /
• v.8 no.4
• /
• pp.263-270
• /
• 2020

The growth of the mobile app markets has made it popular among people who recommend relevant information about restaurants. The recommendation service app based on AI Chatbot is that it can efficiently manage time and finances by making it easy for restaurant consumers to easily access the information they want anytime, anywhere. Eating out consumers use smartphone applications for finding restaurants, making reservations, and getting reviews and how to use them. In addition, social attention has recently been focused on the research of AI chatbot. The Chatbot is combined with the mobile messenger platform and enabling various services due to the text-type interactive service. It also helps users to find the services and data that they need information tersely. Applying this to restaurant recommendation services will increase the reliability of the information in providing personal information. In this paper, an artificial intelligence chatbot-based smartphone restaurant recommendation app using personalization information is proposed. The recommendation service app utilizes personalization information such as gender, age, interests, occupation, search records, visit records, wish lists, reviews, and real-time location information. Users can get recommendations for restaurants that fir their purpose through chatting using AI chatbot. Furthermore, it is possible to check real-time information about restaurants, make reservations, and write reviews. The proposed app uses a collaborative filtering recommendation system, and users receive information on dining out using artificial intelligence chatbots. Through chatbots, users can receive customized services using personal information while minimizing time and space limitations.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
• /
• v.9 no.3
• /
• pp.843-871
• /
• 2015

Cloud computing evolve as a cost effective business model for IT companies to focus on their core business without perturbing on infrastructure related issues. Hence, major IT firms and Small & Medium Enterprises (SME) are adopting cloud services on rental basis from cloud providers. Cloud Service level agreements (SLA) act as a key liaison between consumers and providers on renting Anything as a Service (AaaS). Design of such an agreement must aim for greater profit to providers as well as assured availability of services to consumers. However in reality, cloud SLA is not satisfying the parties involved because of its inherent complex nature and issues. Also currently most of the agreements are unilateral to favour the provider. This study focuses on comprehensive, 360-degree survey on different aspects of the cloud service agreements. We detailed the life cycle of SLA based on negotiation, different types of SLA, current standards, languages & characteristics, metrics and issues involved in it. This study will help the cloud actors to understand and evaluate the agreements and to make firm decision on negotiation. The need for standardized, bilateral, semantic SLA has also been proposed.

• International Commerce and Information Review
• /
• v.7 no.2
• /
• pp.163-181
• /
• 2005

The purpose of this paper is to review the major issues of trade facilitation that have been discussing in relevant international organization such as WTO, WCO, UN/ECE, and UNCTAD In recent years the term, trade facilitation, has become extremely popular and, therefore, applied to an ever-growing number of activities. Trade Facilitation encompasses the simplification, standardization, harmonization and elimination of the procedures, data requirements and administration involved in an international trade transaction. The facilitation of trade procedures is seen by all major international business as vital for economic development. Several factors are fuelling the need for trade facilitation of which two are the globalization of international trade and the rapid IT-development. Another important factor includes increased economic integration by an explosion of regional and bilateral free-trade agreement that often feature complex customs requirements. Technological progress has also introduced faster and cheaper forms of transportation and transportation management techniques, such as the increased use of e-business and JIT. The Internet is also fragmenting containers of goods that could have been custom cleared on a single entry into dozens of individual shipments that each require separate customs documents and clearance procedures. This creates a challenge for express couriers who anticipate exponential growth in small shipments by individual consumers, as compared to shipment by wholesalers or retailers. These consumers expect goods to be cleared immediately. It is no wonder that express couriers are actively promoting, and participating in the trade facilitation agenda.

• The Journal of Information Systems
• /
• v.24 no.4
• /
• pp.99-116
• /
• 2015

Purpose One of the main characteristics of Social Network Service(SNS) is that users in an open space makes posts through voluntary participation and sharing among them. This makes SNS a very attractive channel to companies that need to send their messages to consumers. As a matter of fact, there are many companies doing marketing activities through a platform of Fan Page as a space for corporations and consumers to act together. This study defines the values and types of companies' advertising posts on Facebook, empirically analyzes the results of them, and investigates factors that could enhance the customer engagement. Design/methodology/approach A research model was built to demonstrate which values and types of posts were combined by corporations' posts on Facebook and create their messages and which of those combinations would lead to high results of customer engagement. Findings The results show differences in the values of posts between the group of high customer engagement and the other group on Facebook. This study makes its contribution by conducting elaborate analysis of posts on Facebook and thus proposing marketing strategies that companies, which had difficulties with systematic marketing activities due to cost limitations, could use on Facebook.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
• /
• v.24 no.6
• /
• pp.756-765
• /
• 2022

The purchase-related responses of MZ generation consumers may vary depending on the environmental factors of the fitting room. Therefore, this study extracted and systematized fitting room characteristics in the retail fashion environment. In-depth interviews were conducted with a total of 50 informants to collect data on the experience of using the fitting room. Then, a qualitative analysis was performed. First, results confirmed that the environmental factors of the fitting room include physical (spatiality, functionality, comfort, and convenience) and human (interactivity and congestion) aspects. Next, additional analysis was performed on functionality and interactivity to clarify the influence of environmental characteristics of the fitting room. These factors were classified into qualitative categories. The study results confirmed that, in the case of functionality, preferred lighting and mirror factors vary depending on the clothing product type, the place and situation for wearing, and individual characteristics. Furthermore, regarding interactivity, the preference for the presence of sales staff or companions differed according to personal traits and the need for additional information and evaluation. The study provides valuable information for effective fitting room space planning for offline fashion stores to meet the needs of MZ generation consumers.