• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.61-101
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• 2014

This study investigates when and how disagreements in online customer ratings prompt more favorable product evaluations. Among the three metrics of volume, valence, and variance that feature in the research on online customer ratings, volume and valence have exhibited consistently positive patterns in their effects on product sales or evaluations (e.g., Dellarocas, Zhang, and Awad 2007; Liu 2006). Ratings variance, or the degree of disagreement among reviewers, however, has shown rather mixed results, with some studies reporting positive effects on product sales (e.g., Clement, Proppe, and Rott 2007) while others finding negative effects on product evaluations (e.g., Zhu and Zhang 2010). This study aims to resolve these contradictory findings by introducing preference heterogeneity as a possible moderator and causal attribution as a mediator to account for the moderating effect. The main proposition of this study is that when preference heterogeneity is perceived as high, a disagreement in ratings is attributed more to reviewers' different preferences than to unreliable product quality, which in turn prompts better quality evaluations of a product. Because disagreements mostly result from differences in reviewers' tastes or the low reliability of a product's quality (Mizerski 1982; Sen and Lerman 2007), a greater level of attribution to reviewer tastes can mitigate the negative effect of disagreement on product evaluations. Specifically, if consumers infer that reviewers' heterogeneous preferences result in subjectively different experiences and thereby highly diverse ratings, they would not disregard the overall quality of a product. However, if consumers infer that reviewers' preferences are quite homogeneous and thus the low reliability of the product quality contributes to such disagreements, they would discount the overall product quality. Therefore, consumers would respond more favorably to disagreements in ratings when preference heterogeneity is perceived as high rather than low. This study furthermore extends this prediction to the various levels of average ratings. The heuristicsystematic processing model so far indicates that the engagement in effortful systematic processing occurs only when sufficient motivation is present (Hann et al. 2007; Maheswaran and Chaiken 1991; Martin and Davies 1998). One of the key factors affecting this motivation is the aspiration level of the decision maker. Only under conditions that meet or exceed his aspiration level does he tend to engage in systematic processing (Patzelt and Shepherd 2008; Stephanous and Sage 1987). Therefore, systematic causal attribution processing regarding ratings variance is likely more activated when the average rating is high enough to meet the aspiration level than when it is too low to meet it. Considering that the interaction between ratings variance and preference heterogeneity occurs through the mediation of causal attribution, this greater activation of causal attribution in high versus low average ratings would lead to more pronounced interaction between ratings variance and preference heterogeneity in high versus low average ratings. Overall, this study proposes that the interaction between ratings variance and preference heterogeneity is more pronounced when the average rating is high as compared to when it is low. Two laboratory studies lend support to these predictions. Study 1 reveals that participants exposed to a high-preference heterogeneity book title (i.e., a novel) attributed disagreement in ratings more to reviewers' tastes, and thereby more favorably evaluated books with such ratings, compared to those exposed to a low-preference heterogeneity title (i.e., an English listening practice book). Study 2 then extended these findings to the various levels of average ratings and found that this greater preference for disagreement options under high preference heterogeneity is more pronounced when the average rating is high compared to when it is low. This study makes an important theoretical contribution to the online customer ratings literature by showing that preference heterogeneity serves as a key moderator of the effect of ratings variance on product evaluations and that causal attribution acts as a mediator of this moderation effect. A more comprehensive picture of the interplay among ratings variance, preference heterogeneity, and average ratings is also provided by revealing that the interaction between ratings variance and preference heterogeneity varies as a function of the average rating. In addition, this work provides some significant managerial implications for marketers in terms of how they manage word of mouth. Because a lack of consensus creates some uncertainty and anxiety over the given information, consumers experience a psychological burden regarding their choice of a product when ratings show disagreement. The results of this study offer a way to address this problem. By explicitly clarifying that there are many more differences in tastes among reviewers than expected, marketers can allow consumers to speculate that differing tastes of reviewers rather than an uncertain or poor product quality contribute to such conflicts in ratings. Thus, when fierce disagreements are observed in the WOM arena, marketers are advised to communicate to consumers that diverse, rather than uniform, tastes govern reviews and evaluations of products.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.1-10
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to categorize the gap between coffee shop 'importance' (as perceived by customers before patronizing the coffee shop) and 'satisfaction' (perception of customers after patronizing the coffee shop) as positive or negative and to analyze the effect of these gaps on purchasing behavior. To do this, I used the gap between importance and satisfaction regarding the choice of a coffee shop as the explanatory variable and performed an empirical analysis of the direction and size of the effect of the gap on purchasing behavior (overall satisfaction, willingness-to-revisit) by applying the Ordered Probit Model (OPM). A previous study that used IPA to evaluate the effects of gaps estimated the direction and size of a quadrant but failed to analyze the effect of gaps on customers. In this study, I evaluated the effects of positive and negative gaps on customer satisfaction and willingness-to-revisit. Using OPM, I quantified the effect of positive and negative gaps on overall customer satisfaction and willingness-to-revisit. Per-head expenditure, frequency of visits, and coffee-purchasing place had the most positive effects on overall customer satisfaction. Frequency of visits, followed by per-head expenditure and then coffee-purchasing place, had the most positive impact on willingness-to-visit. Thus per-head expenditure and frequency of visits had the greatest positive effects on overall satisfaction and willingness-to-revisit. This finding implies that the higher the actual satisfaction (gap) of customers who spend KRW5,000 or more once or more per week at coffee shops is, the higher their overall satisfaction and willingness-to-revisit are. Despite the fact that economical efficiency had a significant effect on overall satisfaction and willingness-to-revisit, college and university students still use coffee shops and are willing to spend KRW5,000 because they do not only purchase coffee as a product itself, but use the coffee shop for other activities, such as working, meeting friends, or relaxing. College and university students also access the Internet in coffee shops via personal laptops, watch movies, and study; thus, coffee shops should provide their customers with the appropriate facilities and services. The fact that a positive gap for coffee shop brand had a positive effect on willingness-to-revisit implies that the higher the level of customer satisfaction, the greater the willingness-to-revisit. A negative gap for this factor, on the other hand, implies that the lower the level of customer satisfaction, the lower the willingness-to-revisit. Thus, the brand factor has a comparatively greater effect on satisfaction than the other factors evaluated in this study. Given that the domestic coffee culture is becoming more upscale and college/university students are sensitive to this trend, students are attentive to brands. In most upscale coffee shops in Korea, the outer wall is built out of glass that can be opened, the interiors are exotic with an open kitchen. These upscale coffee shops function as landmarks and match the taste of college/university students. Coffee shops in Korea have become a cultural brand. To make customers feel that coffee shops are upscale, good quality establishments and measures to provide better services in terms of brand factor should be instituted. The intensified competition among coffee shop brands in Korea as a result of the booming industry indicates that provision of additional services is needed to differentiate competitors. These customers can also use a scanner free of charge. Another strategy that can be used to boost brands could be to provide and operate a seminar room for seminars and group study. If coffee shops adopt these types of strategies, college/university students would be more likely to consider the expenses they incur worthwhile and, subsequently, they would be more likely to be satisfied with the brands of these coffee shops, with an associated increase in their willingness-to-revisit. Gender and study year had the most negative effects on overall satisfaction and willingness-to-revisit. Female students were more likely to be satisfied and be willing to return than male students, and third and fourth-year students were more likely to be satisfied and willing-to-return than first or second-year students. Students who drink coffee, read books, and use laptops alone at coffee shops are easily noticeable. High-grade students tend to visit coffee shops alone in order to use their time efficiently for self-development and to find jobs. The economical efficiency factor had the greatest effect on overall satisfaction and willingness-to-revisit in terms of a positive gap. The higher the actual satisfaction (gap) of students with the price of the coffee, the greater their overall satisfaction and willingness-to-revisit. Economical efficiency with a negative gap had a negative effect on willingness-to-revisit, which implies that a less negative gap will result in a greater willingness-to-revisit. Amid worsening market conditions, coffee shops located around colleges/universities are using strategies, such as a point or membership card, strategic alliances with credit-card companies, development of a set menu or seasonal menu, and free coffee-shot services to increase their competitive edge. Product power also had a negative effect in terms of a negative gap, which indicates that a higher negative gap will result in a lower willingness-to-revisit. Because there are many more customers that enjoy coffee in this decade, as compared to previous decades, the new generation of customers, namely college/university students, want various menu items in addition to coffee, and coffee shops should, therefore, add side menu items, such as waffles, rice cakes, cakes, sandwiches, and salads. For example, Starbucks Korea is making efforts to enhance product power by selling rice cakes flavored in strawberry, wormwood, and pumpkin, and providing coffee or cream free of charge. In summary, coffee shops should focus on increasing their economical efficiency, brand, and product power to enhance the satisfaction of college/university students. Because shops adjacent to colleges or universities enjoy a locational advantage, providing differentiated services in terms of economical efficiency, brand, and product power, is likely to increase customer satisfaction and return visits. Coffee shop brands should, therefore, be innovative and embrace change to meet their customers' desires. Because this study only targeted college/university students in Seoul, comparative studies targeting diverse regions and age groups are required to generalize the findings and recommendations of this study.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Culture
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.270-278
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• 2003

The purposes of this study were to investigate the customers' perception on nutrition information provided on a family restaurant menu, to examine customers' intention to use the nutrition information when eating out if nutrition information would be provided, and to identify what kinds of nutrient information the customers want. A total of 265 respondents were answered. Female was sixty-six percents, and eighty-four percent of the respondents was less than thirty-five years old. The patrons' perception about nutrition information on the menu showed the level of 2.5 points out of 5 points, which pointed out that family restaurant patrons were not satisfied with receiving nutritional information related to the menu. The customers perceived that restaurants had responsibilities for providing nutritional information about menu items. Sixty-six percent of respondents showed a positive intention to the question item about how much the customer would use nutritional information provided on the menu. The customers, who were female (p<0.05), who had a good health status, who showed higher interest on weight control (p<0.01), and who were health-oriented (p<0.01), showed the higher intention to use nutritional information. Nutrient information in which the customers were interested strongly was a fat content, followed by cholesterol content and calorie information. According to the trends of eating out, preferring family restaurants, and increasing interests in a healthful menu, nutrition information demand in restaurant operations would be increased rapidly in the near future. Providing nutrition information at the point of menu choice might result in the improvement of customers' nutritional and health status by encouraging proper dietary habits of patrons as well as providing nutritional education. Therefore, it is recommended that government and restaurant firms should recognize the importance of nutrition information and make strategic plans for the future.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Bio-Environment Control Conference
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• 1996.05a
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• pp.1-10
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• 1996

Factory-style plant production systems of various kinds are the final goal of greenhouse production systems. These systems facilitate planning for constant productivity per unit area and labor under various outside weather conditions, although energy consumption is intensive. Physical environmental control in combination with biological control can replace the use of agricultural chemicals such as insecticides, herbicides and hormones to regulate plants. In this way, closed systems which do not use such agricultural chemicals are ideal for environmental conservation for the future. Nutrient components in plants can be regulafied by physical environmental control including nutrient solution control in hydroponics. Therefore, specific contents of nutrients for particular plants can be listed on the container and be used as the basis of customer choice in the future. Plant production systems can be classified into three types based on the type of lighting: natural lighting, supplemental lighting and completely artificial lighting (Plant Factory). The amount of energy consumption increases in this order, although the degree of weather effects is in the reverse order. In the addition to lighting, factory-style plant production systems consist of mechanized and automated systems for transplanting, environmental control, hydroponics, transporting within the facility, and harvesting. Space farming and development of pharmaceutical in bio-reactors are other applications of these types of plant production systems. Various kinds of state-of-art factory-style plant production systems are discussed in the present paper. These systems are, in general, rather sophisticated and mechaized, and energy consumption is intensive. Factory-style plant production is the final goal of greenhouse production systems and the possibilities for the future are infinte but not clear.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.89-105
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• 2007

The apartment market in korea is rapidly changing from the producer-oriented market to the customer-oriented market. This means the user's perception of the apartment changed, so the pattern of purchase also changed. The apartment house enterprises should use the method of well grasping the purchase intention of the customers, and then satisfying buyer's need to study the marketing strategy. Seeing from the circumstances, the purpose of study is not just the real estate, and on the basic of preceding studies about the marketing field also should analysis what kind of influence the housing environment gives to the standard of the housing value and housing satisfaction, and what kind of influence the standard of the housing choice criteria gives to housing value, housing satisfaction and Repurchase Intention, and what kind of influence this kind of housing value and housing satisfaction gives to the Repurchase Intention. And also should give some suggestions for strengthening the competitiveness of the apartment house enterprises later.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.67-74
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• 2018

Purpose - Most of the amendments to the law on the improvement of the distribution structure of mobile communication terminal equipment, the fully self-sufficient system of terminals, and the separated disclosure system on the terminals are aimed at securing transparency of the distribution structure by eliminating or reducing handset subsidies. This study investigates what items are important for the purchase of mobile phones in various and rapidly changing mobile phone markets from the consumer's point of view and tries to make a strategic suggestion for future mobile distribution strategies. Research design, data, and methodology - The procedure of this study takes place in four steps. In step 1, only the SF type respondents selected for this study were extracted through MBTI analysis. In step 2, they were divided into three hierarchies for the AHP analysis and each element was arranged. In step 3, the AHP analysis was converted to a Fuzzy-AHP number using the trigonometric centroid method. This was to eliminate the ambiguity of the response by converting into a fuzzy number even if data consistency was maintained with CI value below 0.1. In step 4, the number of converted 2-layer and 3-layer was combined to derive the priority when the final handset is selected. Results - First, the highest importance among the four items in the second tier was the terminal function item, followed by brand, price, and design item. Second, in the third tier, the highest importance was level of after-sales service, followed by device price, processing speed, ease of use, usefulness, and rate system. Third, the arithmetic average of the determinant of the fuzzy function showed that processing speed, ease of use and usefulness in the function item, level of after-sales service in the brand item, and device price in the price item were the five most important factors among 16 choice factors. Conclusions - First, there will be a change in the consumption patterns of consumers who have compared distributors and dealers to purchase handsets with more subsidies. Second, it is highly likely that people will purchase new handsets only when they need to change their devices because they can not receive subsidies by switching phone brands any more.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.167-174
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• 2018

Japanese state has continuously tried to adapt itself to the social demands coming from rapidly greying population. Japanese government introduced the new social insurance system of elderly care, i.e. Long term Care Insurance with epoch-making changes in the Japanese welfare system. The most important aspects of the new system can be summarised as follows: 1) social insurance system of obligatory entry with paying premiums and co-payment 2) emphasis on the customer choice, competition, flexibility, free-market, relaxation of the regulation. This characteristics brought unexpected results of the emergence of ethnicity-centred contents of welfare services. As a selling point in freemarket and as a countermeasures against expected ethnic disadvantages, the Korean ethnic organisations brought the ethnic elements resulting in the diversified Japanese welfare services.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.362-372
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• 2008

The remarkable tendency shown in recent fashion can be the customer's passiveness, not only their feeling desire for product but also needs for product seem to be made by mass media. So this condition can be thought as the currency of energy for being subjected. The public of fashion eagerly want the fashion style to be suggested for following it. The late Freudian, Erich Fromm said that the reason why individuals demand themselves to follow the masses' move could be explained as the hope against the fear of feeling not being from staying isolated and having no direction. Escaping from this fear, individuals ought to believe the necessity of participation in public. The fashion is willing to be defined as the united condition by individuals in the hope being consolidate in masses against being solitude. Nowadays, people can share many informations with internet, the fastest medium, which makes the individuals impatient not to be isolate, thinking other people must contact the information and should feel pressure of taking part in the currency. Even though the style is considered to be awkward for following it, it's frequent exposure on mass media by celebrities wearing the style could soon make a fashion. This is able to show that many customers should incline to consider less about their style or taste, whereas lean to pursue after masses' authority. Recent consumers have propensity to avoid feeling concern about others' criticism, on the other side, they try to chase of the fashion as masses' choice for feeling peaceful. The reason why people recognize not to have clothing to wear in spite of a large wardrobe, it must reflect their needs promoted from outside influence of introducing for new styles.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.75-84
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• 2006

The internet has the capabilities of supporting and facilitating several forms of consumer interaction including one-to-one, one to many, or many-to-many interactions. Especially, previous studies revealed that the Online Word-of-Mouth communication is widely used as a source of customer's information seeking and purchase decision making. Even with this importance of the Online Word-of-Mouth communication on internet, few research has systematically addressed the issue. This study investigates the effect of interpersonal communication on consumers' information search activities and develops a model that depicts the key antecedents and mediating variables of interpersonal communication in internet shopping environment. The results are as follows: First, choice uncertainty, perceived risk, and knowledge uncertainty play an important role for perceived usefulness. Second, perceived usefulness has directly affected interactive communication of consumers' communication style. Thus, it is essential for internet companies to find ways to encourage their customers to engage in word-of-mouth communication.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.153-172
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• 1997

The distribution sector is affected by a wide range of regulations. Many of these are related to health and safety, others are related to urban planning and environmental issues, whereas some mainly have an economic basis. But, regulations many be unduly restrictive, in which case they can drive up costs and ultimately prices, or they may, in some cases, reduce consumer choice. Unduly restrictive regulations could also increase costs indirectly, by reducing competition and thus lead to lower productivity growth. In the past few years, distribution sector has gone through drastic changes due to deregulation and market opening. Implementation of regulatory reforms served as an opportunity to change laws and systems which had been an obstacle to development of distribution sector. Market opening of distribution sector became a turning point to promote competition among domestic and foreign firms. However, for small and medium scale of the typical retail enterprises which were in no position to compete in terms of prices, additional facilities, and services, faced a threat of diminished trading area, and even of their existence. Because, large firms may have greater market power than small firms, as they can more easily extract favorable terms when procuring goods, and may also be able to deter entry by advertising outlays or access to the best sites. In addition, larger chain stores armied with sufficient capital dominated trading area and reduced customer's welfare by abusing their monopoly power when competing with other shops, and are often cited as an example of adverse effects of local monopoly. In order to minimize such adverse effects and to foster competition, regulatory reforms in distribution sector should set its goal to promote sound and stable distribution activities through market principle and restoring competition principle, and ultimately to boost customers welfare. Therefore, deregulation in distribution sector should be implemented in a way to promote customers welfare, eliminate entry barriers, and expand competition principle such as productivity and efficiency competition. However, it should be also recognized that deregulation of system alone is not enough to develop the distribution sector. To compete in a increasingly concentrated industry, small enterprises increasingly engage in co-operative arrangements, such as buying groups, strategic alliances or franchise agreements.