• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.231-238
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• 2010

The anthropomorphism of brands, defined as seeing human beings in brands (Puzakova, Kwak, and Rosereto, 2008) is the focus of this study. Specifically, the research objective is to understand the ways in which brands are rendered humanlike. By analyzing consumer readings of stories found on food product packages we intend to show how marketers and consumers humanize a spectrum of brands and create meanings. Our research question considers the possibility that a single brand may host multiple or single meanings, associations, and personalities for different consumers. We start by highlighting the theoretical and practical significance of our research, explain why we turn our attention to packages as vehicles of brand meaning transfer, then describe our qualitative methodology, discuss findings, and conclude with a discussion of managerial implications and directions for future studies. The study was designed to directly expose consumers to potential vehicles of brand meaning transfer and then engage these consumers in free verbal reflections on their perceived meanings. Specifically, we asked participants to read non-nutritional stories on selected branded food packages, in order to elicit data about received meanings. Packaging has yet to receive due attention in consumer research (Hine, 1995). Until now, attention has focused solely on its utilitarian function and has generated a body of research that has explored the impact of nutritional information and claims on consumer perceptions of products (e.g., Loureiro, McCluskey and Mittelhammer, 2002; Mazis and Raymond, 1997; Nayga, Lipinski and Savur, 1998; Wansik, 2003). An exception is a recent study that turns its attention to non-nutritional packaging narratives and treats them as cultural productions and vehicles for mythologizing the brand (Kniazeva and Belk, 2007). The next step in this stream of research is to explore how such mythologizing activity affects brand personality perception and how these perceptions relate to consumers. These are the questions that our study aimed to address. We used in-depth interviews to help overcome the limitations of quantitative studies. Our convenience sample was formed with the objective of providing demographic and psychographic diversity in order to elicit variations in consumer reflections to food packaging stories. Our informants represent middle-class residents of the US and do not exhibit extreme alternative lifestyles described by Thompson as "cultural creatives" (2004). Nine people were individually interviewed on their food consumption preferences and behavior. Participants were asked to have a look at the twelve displayed food product packages and read all the textual information on the package, after which we continued with questions that focused on the consumer interpretations of the reading material (Scott and Batra, 2003). On average, each participant reflected on 4-5 packages. Our in-depth interviews lasted one to one and a half hours each. The interviews were tape recorded and transcribed, providing 140 pages of text. The products came from local grocery stores on the West Coast of the US and represented a basic range of food product categories, including snacks, canned foods, cereals, baby foods, and tea. The data were analyzed using procedures for developing grounded theory delineated by Strauss and Corbin (1998). As a result, our study does not support the notion of one brand/one personality as assumed by prior work. Thus, we reveal multiple brand personalities peacefully cohabiting in the same brand as seen by different consumers, despite marketer attempts to create more singular brand personalities. We extend Fournier's (1998) proposition, that one's life projects shape the intensity and nature of brand relationships. We find that these life projects also affect perceived brand personifications and meanings. While Fournier provides a conceptual framework that links together consumers’ life themes (Mick and Buhl, 1992) and relational roles assigned to anthropomorphized brands, we find that consumer life projects mold both the ways in which brands are rendered humanlike and the ways in which brands connect to consumers' existential concerns. We find two modes through which brands are anthropomorphized by our participants. First, brand personalities are created by seeing them through perceived demographic, psychographic, and social characteristics that are to some degree shared by consumers. Second, brands in our study further relate to consumers' existential concerns by either being blended with consumer personalities in order to connect to them (the brand as a friend, a family member, a next door neighbor) or by distancing themselves from the brand personalities and estranging them (the brand as a used car salesman, a "bunch of executives.") By focusing on food product packages, we illuminate a very specific, widely-used, but little-researched vehicle of marketing communication: brand storytelling. Recent work that has approached packages as mythmakers, finds it increasingly challenging for marketers to produce textual stories that link the personalities of products to the personalities of those consuming them, and suggests that "a multiplicity of building material for creating desired consumer myths is what a postmodern consumer arguably needs" (Kniazeva and Belk, 2007). Used as vehicles for storytelling, food packages can exploit both rational and emotional approaches, offering consumers either a "lecture" or "drama" (Randazzo, 2006), myths (Kniazeva and Belk, 2007; Holt, 2004; Thompson, 2004), or meanings (McCracken, 2005) as necessary building blocks for anthropomorphizing their brands. The craft of giving birth to brand personalities is in the hands of writers/marketers and in the minds of readers/consumers who individually and sometimes idiosyncratically put a meaningful human face on a brand.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.13 no.9
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• pp.81-93
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• 2015

Purpose - "Showrooming" refers to the phenomenon where a shopper visits a store to see and compare products but makes the purchase online at a lower price. Surveys on showrooming activities at home and abroad indicate that a significant number of consumers pursue showrooming activities. The advent of "showroomers," who engage in buying activities, hovering both on and offline, while selectively choosing sales channels to suit their needs, is powerful enough to erode the borders between channels and bring about seismic changes in the distribution industry. However, surprisingly, there has been no in-depth discussion on showrooming. This study seeks to theoretically investigate what impact personal characteristics have on showrooming preferences and attitudes in a multi-channel environment. Specifically, assumptions have been made that price perception, perceived performance risk, and trust in online shopping not only have a direct impact on showrooming attitudes but also indirectly affect it through the means of contact motivation. Research design, data, and methodology - To test the hypotheses, this study conducted a survey of male and female shoppers, ages 20 through 40s, who live in metropolitan areas, and have actively showroomed fashion items in the last six months. A clothing item usually purchased after a careful decision-making process was chosen as the target product of the study. The survey was conducted between October and November 2014, using a professional survey service provider. A total of 200 surveys were collected, of which 198 were used for analysis. Conceptual model Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and Amos 18.0 were employed for data analysis and model verification. In addition, following the confirmatory factor analysis and measurement model analysis, the theoretical model that corresponds to the research model was analyzed. Results - Analysis results show that price perception, perceived performance risk, and trust in online shopping have a statistically significant and positive (+) impact on showrooming attitudes. In addition, in terms of the indirect influence of price perception and perceived performance risk on showrooming attitudes through means of contact motivation, price perception had a statistically significant and positive impact on means of contact motivation, whereas perceived performance risk did not have a statistically significant impact on it, with the relevant hypothesis rejected. Conclusions - These analysis results imply that the ultimate goal of consumers is to maximize their shopping benefits by selectively and strategically taking advantage of different channels in a complementary manner. This study presents many implications for distributors to encourage a deep understanding of showrooming consumers who have complicated consumption behaviors and to build channel integration strategies. This study has limitations in theoretical and practical implications. Therefore, subsequent studies need to focus on verifying that showrooming activities are based on reasonable and planned decisions by applying the theory of reasoned or planned behavior. In addition, the scope of the study should expand to include web showrooming, where consumers conduct product research online and purchase offline.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.904-915
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• 2009

This study compares fashion leaders and market mavens by examining the demographic characteristics of fashion leaders and market mavens and how they differ in their evaluation of store and shopping related attributes. Data originated from a national consumer mail survey in the United States. The survey included items measuring market mavenism, fashion leadership, store evaluative attributes, and personal information. Responses from 380 consumers were used for data analysis. Female consumers were found to be more active in word-of-mouth activities in general. Young consumers were more inclined to express fashion leadership while age was not related to market mavenism. A lower level of education increased tendencies for both market mavenism and fashion leadership. In terms of store evaluative criteria, the majority of items in the survey were more important as fashion leadership and market mavenism tendencies increased. Interestingly, the need for knowledgeable or helpful salespeople did not increase with fashion leadership tendencies. Also, fashion leaders were interested in easy return of merchandise and were likely to spend more time in the stores. This study sheds important light on how fashion leadership differ compared to market mavenism. By simultaneously examining fashion leadership and market mavenism using a strong sample base, this study provides sound evidence of how consumers interested in fashion may have differing needs for shopping.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.1-29
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• 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 Convergence for Information Technology
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.212-218
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• 2022

This study aims to understand health care consumer's information searching behavior according to their presence of chronic diseases. For this purpose, 240 patients' data of university hospital located in Seoul were collected by surveys from 9 February to 11 February 2016. For statistical analysis, we used SPSS Ver. 26.0. The main results of this study are as follows: First, Chi-square test showed that chronic patients used expert information sources and experiential information sources more than those without chronic diseases. Second, chronic patients were found to search nutrition management, exercise management, and patient case. Lastly, in the case of hospital-related searches, patients with chronic diseases searched more waiting time and medical expenses than those without chronic diseases. The significance of this study is to provide basic data for efficient information provision and establishment of marketing strategies reflecting information needs of health care consumers.

• Journal of Korea Society of Industrial Information Systems
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.101-111
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• 2017

This Research is to Find how the CSR Activities for the Growth of Stable and Sustainable Family Business do Influence the Improvement of Company's Brand Image and Service Purchase Intention. It is Aimed for Finding how the Image of Company Pursuing the Diverse CSR Activities is Recognized by General Consumers and the Correlation between the Improvement of Company's Image and the Product & Service Purchase Intention. 323 Exemplars were Distributed to the University Students in Seoul Metropolitan and Chungcheong Area, and 314 Finally were Used for the Analysis. It was Investigated the Demographical Factors, the Important Fields among Company's CSR Activities, the Reason for Company's CSR Activities, the Preferred Companies among Sponsoring Companies. It was Analyzed Three Items of Company Image such as Product/Service, Potential Competence, Relation to Public Benefit and the Regression Model was Investigated how these Three Items do Influence the Purchase Intention. The Research Results Show 'the Improvement of Social Awareness for Company' and 'Negative Awareness Change for Company' as the Reason for CSR. Consumers have the Preference to the Companies Actively Sponsoring Culture & Arts, and this Generally Affects the Business Results, and thus, it is Considered that the Companies have to Contribute the Local Society with the Sprit of Corporate Citizenship in Accordance with the Consumers needs, and Actively to Extend the Culture & Arts Sponsorship.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.14 no.11
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• pp.143-153
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• 2014

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of factors related to consumer lifestyle and media usage on the adoption of Nscreen service, which is fundamentally changing both the competitive landscape for business and the daily lives of consumers. The data of 8,524 consumers used in this study were drawn from the first Korea Media Panel Study in 2012 of Korea Information Society Development Institute and the characteristics of adopters and non-adopters were compared. The study also aims to explore the usage pattern of Nscreen as well as antecedent variables that affect the innovative service usage. Logistic regression analysis shows various factors affects the acceptance of this innovation. This is only a first step in the important process of understanding the nature of relationship between consumer lifestyle and the adoption of Nscreen service. Gaining a comprehensive understanding of the drivers of Nscreen usage will help engineers and marketers to develop effective strategies that meet consumer needs for innovative services.

• Journal of Advanced Navigation Technology
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.495-503
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• 2012

As modern society rapidly changes, the field of education has also developed speedily. Since Edunet system developed in 1996, many different systems are developing continuously such as Center for Teaching and Learning, cyber home learning systems, diagnosis prescribing systems, video systems, teaching and counseling, and study management systems. However, the aforementioned systems have had not great response from the educational consumers due to a lack of interconnection. There are several reasons for it. One of the reasons is that program administrators did not carefully consider the continuity of each programs but established a brand new system whenever they need rather than predict or consider the future needs. The suitable system for smart education should be one big integrated system based on many different data analysis and processing. The system should also supply educational consumers various and useful information by adopting the idea of bigdata rather than a single sign on system connecting each independent system. The cloud computing system should be established as a system that can be managed not as simple compiled files and application programs but as various contents and DATA.

• Journal of KIISE
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• v.42 no.11
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• pp.1361-1371
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• 2015

Depending on the increase amongst various cloud services, the technology of the Cloud Service Broker (CSB) to find the most appropriate services to meet the needs of cloud service consumers has emerged. In order to advance for cloud services to be used through the CSB, it is important to ensure the quality level that meets the demands of consumers through a negotiation process based on the Service Level Agreement (SLA). However, quality metrics of cloud services are different from each other based on the measurement scale, which represents the quality level, and the calculation for each type of cloud services. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the variability of the quality of cloud services and establish a SLA model for ensuring and improving the level of quality. In this paper, we analyze the quality metrics for the specific type of cloud services by applying the cross-cutting concept and propose a Virtual SLA (VSLA) meta-model.

• Journal of the Society of Cosmetic Scientists of Korea
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• v.32 no.4 s.59
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• pp.269-282
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• 2006

In this study, we tried to scrutinize the status and problems of domestic cosmetics industry. On the basis of theoretical study, we examined the strategic marketing skill and tactics of foreign products to devise a strategy for domestic cosmetics with the help of marketing mix of foreign competitors: so to say 4 Ps. The core of the empirical research is hereby the effect of consumers' behavior. The conclusion of the research can be summarized as following: the most important problem of domestic cosmetics industry is the poor brand power. It has been confirmed that the consumer needs are various and dynamic. Analysis of 4 Ps of marketing factors of foreign goods shows this very clearly. Consumers tend to rely upon the brand name of the product rather than the quality, when they don't have enough information or knowledge on the product. This conclusion teaches us to make an effective strategy of marketing. It is brand power and brand cultivating. This study may give domestic marketers a motive to predict the future and succeed in existence and prosperity.