• International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.375-385
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• 2024

In the context of contemporary digital media, virtual influencers have become an increasingly important form of socialization and entertainment, in which emotional expression is a key factor in attracting viewers. In this study, we take Luo Tianyi, a Chinese virtual influencer, as an example to explore how emotions are expressed and perceived through facial expressions in different types of videos. Using Paul Ekman's Facial Action Coding System (FACS) and six basic emotion classifications, the study systematically analyzes Luo Tianyi's emotional expressions in three types of videos, namely Music show, Festivals and Brand Cooperation. During the study, Luo Tianyi's facial expressions and emotional expressions were analyzed through rigorous coding and categorization, as well as matching the context of the video content. The results show that Enjoyment is the most frequently expressed emotion by Luo Tianyi, reflecting the centrality of positive emotions in content creation. Meanwhile, the presence of other emotion types reveals the virtual influencer's efforts to create emotionally rich and authentic experiences. The frequency and variety of emotions expressed in different video genres indicate Luo Tianyi's diverse strategies for communicating and connecting with viewers in different contexts. The study provides an empirical basis for understanding and utilizing virtual influencers' emotional expressions, and offers valuable insights for digital media content creators to design emotional expression strategies. Overall, this study is valuable for understanding the complexity of virtual influencer emotional expression and its importance in digital media strategy.

• Journal of Wellbeing Management and Applied Psychology
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.33-41
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• 2022

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to analyze the effect of attributes of online influencers on customers royalty mediated brand image and impulse buying. Research design, data and methodology: To conduct this study, a survey of 521 online user who experienced online shopping. Results: The empirical analysis results are as follows. First, among the influencer attributes, attractiveness, reliability, and expertise all had a significant positive effect on the brand image. Second, among the influencer attributes, only attractiveness had a significant positive influence on Purchase Intention. Third, the brand image had a significant positive influence on Purchase Intention. Fourth, while the influencer attributes did not have a significant influence on customer loyalty, brand image and Purchase Intention a significant positive influence on it. Conclusions: Among the influencer attributes, attractiveness and reliability had a significant positive mediating effect on customer loyalty through brand image, but the influencer attribute had no significant mediating effect through Purchase Intention. The influencer attribute had a significant positive mediating effect through brand image and Purchase Intention.

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.116-132
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• 2022

Fashion marketing activity performed by social media influencers (SMIs) has grown exponentially in the past years. Research regarding their marketing power is often discussed in the context of sponsorship disclosure, in order to overcome obstacles of impending regulations that may endanger the authenticity SMIs are perceived to have compared to traditional marketing agents. Upon recent heterogeneous findings, a netnographic approach was taken to examine the actual sponsored posts of SMIs on Instagram. Based on two representative cases that received media coverage, a qualitative analysis of 1,058 comments on Instagram showed customer inspiration and informational social influence regardless of sponsorship disclosures present. Regarding customer inspiration, high frequency of comments including choice imitation intentions was observed. Under certain conditions, customer responses were focused on the SMI's expertise irrespective from the brand being endorsed. Findings show future implications from both an academic and industry-focused perspective for future potential of SMIs in fashion marketing.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.62-77
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• 2022

Seeded marketing campaign (SMC) is a newly created type of marketing activities with the widespread use of social media. Previous research has examined to find out the optimal seeding strategy that yields the best outcome from the campaign. This research explores the relationships between the characteristics of the seeded influencer and user engagement. The data consists of information from 1062 seeded Instagram posts posted in September 2020 in Korea and 778 seeded influencers who posted those contents. Analyzed by negative binomial regression, our quadratic model suggests that the relationship between user engagement and the number of followers of the seeded influencer draws an inverted U-shape, indicating influencers with greater number of followers may not always be the best choice for the marketers. Moreover, this research shows that the negative marginal impact coming from the huge number of followers can be attenuated when the influencer is an expert of the seeded product.

• International Journal of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.31-38
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• 2023

This paper introduces a real-time face swapping system that enables video influencers to swap their faces with arbitrary generated face images of their choice. The system is implemented as a Django-based server that uses a REST request to communicate with the generative model,specifically the pretrained stable diffusion model. Once generated, the generated image is displayed on the front page so that the influencer can decide whether to use the generated face or not, by clicking on the accept button on the front page. If they choose to use it, both their face and the generated face are sent to the landmark extraction module to extract the landmarks, which are then used to swap the faces. To minimize the fluctuation of landmarks over time that can cause instability or jitter in the output, a temporal filtering step is added. Furthermore, to increase the processing speed the system works on a reduced set of the extracted landmarks.

• International journal of advanced smart convergence
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.127-134
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• 2023

Existing studies on this topic have focused on the effect of online content quality on consumer attitudes and behavior, with very few illustrating the effect of influencer image on consumer attitudes and behavior. The purpose of this study intents to reveal how influencer image affect consumer behavior. We have developed an image transfer theory-based research model to reveal how influencers transfer their image to endorsed products to influence consumer behavior. The results show that influencer image positively affects satisfaction, which in turn affects the product's cognitive and affective images in the vlog. Moreover, it was found that a product's cognitive image and affective image influence consumer behavior intention. Furthermore, purchase experience exhibits significant differences in its path. Based on these results, the social media-related research theoretical implication will be offered, and managerial implications will be provided for foreign brand promotion strategies

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.21 no.11
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• pp.121-134
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• 2021

As interest in stock markets is growing recently in Korea, more investors in their twenties are using the information provided by personal broadcasting channels on YouTube. This study explores how watching the stock market channels on YouTube influences watching behaviors and investment intentions. A structural equation modeling analysis of survey data from 219 adults in the twenties revealed that the perceived credibility of and para-social interaction with the YouTube influencers affected continued viewing intentions. The findings also showed that the effect of identification with the influencers on viewing satisfaction was more prominent when identification mediated the effect of para-social interaction on viewing satisfaction. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.184-192
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• 2019

Focusing on the emerging influencer market of SNS (Social Network Service), This study attempts to clarify the priority of Influencer characteristics when the customer decided to purchase products through the promotion of influencers. Since the influencer marketing differs from the Online information source marketing, this study has an academic implication in that integrated the influence of the characteristics of the Online information sources and the characteristics of SNS contents. For this purpose, through the literature research on Information sources and Influencers, the characteristics of influencers were reconstructed and priorities were derived using the AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) technique. The upper layer of the AHP structure was set to expertise, trustworthiness, social attractiveness, and content attractiveness, and the lower layer structured the model with 13 subfactors. The results are summarized as follows. First, in the result of combining the importance of the $1^{st}$ and $2^{nd}$ classes, the detailed factors of expertise and trustworthiness, ranked from the top to six, are largely influenced in purchasing decisions in influencer marketing. Second, content attractiveness is the third rank in the $1^{st}$ layer. Influencer marketing shows that content is more important than social attractiveness. Besides, the $7^{th}$ to $9^{th}$ positions of the overall rankings accounted for visual information, storytelling, and external attractiveness, which are the details of content attractiveness, and it is confirmed that it is more effective for influencer marketing to emphasize content attractiveness than social attractiveness. Although the influencer marketing differs from the existing information marketing, this study has an academic implication in that integrated the influence of the characteristics of the source and the characteristics of the contents.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.21 no.10
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• pp.172-183
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• 2021

The current study delves into millennial consumers' attitude toward 'undisclosed ads' and 'disclosed ads' through in-depth interviews. More specifically, this study explores how millennial consumers think of undisclosed ads and celebrity endorsers as well as influencers through interviewing 12 millennial consumers. In addition, this study also deals with millennial consumers' attitude toward disclosed ads and celebrity endorsers as well as influencers. Study results suggest that millennial consumers perceive 'undisclosed ads' as deceiving ads and hold negative attitude toward celebrity endorsers as well as influencers who are involved in 'undisclosed ads'. Interestingly, millennial consumers hold both positive and negative attitude toward 'disclosed ads'. 'Disclosed ads' could be delivered to millennial consumers without any reservation when it is integrated as an entertaining factor into contents. On the other hands, negative feelings could occur when 'disclosed ads' is frequently employed and is forcibly embedded in contents, making millennial consumers feel that it is imperative to watch 'disclosed ads' in order to enjoy free contents. In the discussion section practical implications are provided.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.104-112
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• 2023

This study attempted to investigate the characteristics of beauty influencers' social media contents and examine their influence on color cosmetics purchase intention. For this, female millennials who have shown an interest or subscribed beauty contents on social media platforms as followers were selected by convenience sampling. In terms of a research method, a self-administered questionnaire was performed from September 19 to 30, 2022. Among a total of 220 questionnaires distributed, 200 copies excluding poorly answered ones were used for final analysis. The collected data were analyzed by frequency analysis, descriptive statistics, factor analysis, reliability analysis, correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis, using SPSS 24.0, and the results found the followings: First, concerning characteristics of beauty influencers' beauty contents, five factors were derived: reliability, professionalism, social attractiveness, attractive appearance, sympathy In purchase intention, on the contrary, two factors were obtained: base makeup, point makeup. Second, regarding the effects of characteristics of beauty contents on color cosmetics purchase intention, 'professionalism (β = -.170 p = .015)' and 'physical attractiveness (β = -.148, p = .037)' revealed a negative influence with statistical significance. Through the result, by demonstrating the effect on the intention to purchase color cosmetics based on the beauty contents feature of the beauty influencer, it is considered that the purchasing power of the color cosmetics industry will continue to increase and help to suggest more effective color cosmetics promotion ways and indicators which companies can utilize.