• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.143-164
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• 2010

Although word-of-mouth (WOM) has been regarded as one of the very important topics in consumer research, its effects on other aspects of consumer behavior have been scarcely investigated in the context of health-care service industry. The WOM literature also suggests that it is essential for medical care service organizations in fierce competition to adopt WOM communication as a competitive weapon so as to be able to stay ahead of competition. The goal of this research was set to empirically study various relationships between antecedent variables, WOM acceptance, and purchase of medical care services. Specifically, drawing on the WOM literature, eight antecedents to WOM acceptance were selected first. Based on the relevant literature, seven sets of hypotheses on the relationships among antecedents to WOM, WOM acceptance, purchase intention and purchase of medical services were developed. Data were collected via an on-line survey. A total of 571 out of 600 responses turned out to be usable. The major findings of this study can be summarized as follows: First, 6 out of 8 antecedent variables to WOM acceptance were found to be positively affect WOM acceptance. However, the effects of (1) "newness of technology" pertaining to medical care service characteristics and (2) "involvement in health", one of receiver characteristics, were found to be insignificant. Second, most moderating effects on the relationship between purchase and purchase intention of medical care services were found to be insignificant with one exception. That is, elapse of time was found to be a marginally significant moderator on the relationship between purchase and purchase intention of medical care services. Third, it was found that the higher the WOM acceptance, the higher the purchase intention of medical care services. Finally, the effect of WOM acceptance was found to be particularly strong when WOM contents were perceived as useful and positive. Overall, it seems essential for hospitals to actively adopt WOM communication as a competitive marketing tool if they plan to improve their business performance. In this respect, the current study may serve to improve the business performance of hospitals by way of providing theoretical and empirical evidence on the effects of WOM communication variables on WOM acceptance and medical care service purchase.

• Journal of Service Research and Studies
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.1-17
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• 2024

One of the most important decisions for managers in the online banner advertising industry, is to choose the best banner alternative for exposure to customers. Since it is difficult to know the click probability of each banner alternative in advance, managers must experiment with multiple alternatives, estimate the click probability of each alternative based on customer clicks, and find the optimal alternative. In this reinforcement learning process, the main decision problem is to find the optimal balance between the level of exploitation strategy that utilizes the accumulated estimated click probability information and exploration strategy that tries new alternatives to find potentially better options. In this study we analyze the impact of word-of-mouth effects and the number of alternatives on the optimal exploration-exploitation strategies. More specifically, we focus on the word-of-mouth effect, where the click-through rate of the banner increases as customers promote the related product to those around them after clicking the exposed banner, and add it to the overall reinforcement learning process. We analyze our problem by employing the Multi-Armed Bandit model, and the analysis results show that the larger the word-of-mouth effect and the fewer the number of banner alternatives, the higher the optimal exploration level of advertising reinforcement learning. We find that as the probability of customers clicking on the banner increases due to the word-of-mouth effect, the value of the previously accumulated estimated click-through rate knowledge decreases, and therefore the value of exploring new alternatives increases. Additionally, when the number of advertising alternatives is small, a larger increase in the optimal exploration level was observed as the magnitude of the word-of-mouth effect increased. This study provides meaningful academic and managerial implications at a time when online word-of-mouth and its impact on society and business is becoming more important.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.11 no.10
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• pp.341-350
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• 2013

Recently, in order to promote their marketing promotion, the entrepeneurs attach importance to many SNS(Social Network Service)and execute it. The representative elements of the SNS service are interactivity, information offering. This study analyzes empirical effects on the SNS Marketing Features in Domesic Enterprise The conclusion of this study shows that the Interactivity has a higher positive effects on Affective Commitment than those on information offering and Information offering has stronger positive effects on calculative commitment than interactivity. Also, these effects enlarge the high use frequency more than the low use frequency. This study also shows that the information offering affect the On-line Word-of-Mouth more positively than the Interactivity. And this study shows that SNS affects the positive effects on the relationship commitment rather than the On-line Word-of-Mouth. Based on the results, the practical implications are offered.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartD
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• v.10D no.6
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• pp.1049-1058
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• 2003

The last few years have been a boom time for the online gaming industry. Internet-based online games have made an increasingly popular form of entertainment. The gaming industry estimates that online gaming players reach over 26 million in 2002. The rapid development of online game-contents and related information technology shall increase the size of industry and have a profound impact on many ways of our living and sociaty. This paper develops the exploratory LISREL model for identifying the factors attecting the players' loyalty for some specific brand of online games. The concept of flow, word of mouth, feedback, challenge, social norms, and online community activities, etc, are all introduced into the model, as the independent variables affecting the loyalty directly and indirectly. Based on data collected from online questionnaire survey, the validity of the model has been tested and interesting conclusions have been developed concerning the relationships between the loyalty, flow, word of mouth and other set of independent vareables. It is hoped that this result might provide the useful guidelines for developing the successful online game contents.

• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.600-616
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• 2016

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of power blog self-presentation and on-line shopping mall reviews on the word of mouth (WOM) effect and apparel purchasing behavior. Consumers living in Seoul and Gyeonggi received questionnaires. There were 303 usable forms that could be analyzed by descriptive statistics, factor analysis, Cronbach's alpha, and regression analysis. The results were as follows: There was a significant effect of power blog self-presentation such as interactivity, media effect, and business intention on information acceptance through WOM. Power blog self-presentation, such as interactivity and business intention, affect information delivery by WOM significantly. There was a significant effect of review consideration, such as agreement, usefulness, enjoyment, and purity, on information acceptance of WOM. Reviews describing enjoyment, purity, and usefulness affect information delivery of WOM significantly. Business intention, media effect, and purity directly affect apparel-purchasing behavior, and affect the WOM effect as a mediator variable and then purchasing behavior. Whereas, interactivity, overstatement, and enjoyment affect the WOM effect as a mediator variable, and then affect overall purchasing behavior. Therefore, fashion firms consider active interaction with power blog visitors and promote the way of enjoying with fun through review of apparel on-line shopping mall when they try to implement viral marketing with WOM effect.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.216-230
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• 2014

The importance of the Chinese fashion market is increasing; therefore, this study investigates the possibility of implementing a Word-of-Mouth (WOM) marketing strategy among Chinese students in Korea. This study examines the effects of consumer characteristics (similarity, opinion leadership, and fashion innovativeness), awareness of Korean fashion brands, satisfaction with Korean fashion products on WOM experiences and WOM behavior (off-line as well as on-line). A total of 161 responses from Chinese students in Korea were gathered and analyzed using SPSS 20.0 for descriptive statistics, factor analysis, and regression analysis. The results show that consumer characteristics (except similarity) significantly influence WOM experiences, opinion leadership influence off-line WOM behavior, and fashion innovativeness influence online WOM behavior. However, similarity has no influence on WOM experiences and WOM behavior. Second, Korean brand awareness affect both WOM experiences and behavior; however, satisfaction with Korean fashion products only affected WOM experiences. This study showed the feasibility of conducting a WOM marketing strategy using the WOM effects of Chinese students in Korea. The study may help the Korean apparel industries establish an entry strategy for the Chinese market.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.35 no.8
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• pp.918-932
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• 2011

This research examines shopping motives, information search of e-fashion consumers and their behavioral intentions (word of mouth, repurchase and site switching intentions). The survey was conducted from December $17^{th}$ 2010 to January $5^{th}$ 2011 and all respondents had previous experiences with on-line purchase of fashion items. The study finds that an information search has three dimensions, recreational search, informative search, and rational search. The effects of both hedonic and utilitarian shopping motives on information search and behavioral intentions are significant. In addition, recreational and informative search have a positive impact on word of mouth and site switching intentions, while repurchase intention is influenced by an informative search. Rational search has a positive effect on switching intention only. Finally, there are significant differences by gender in shopping motives, information search and behavioral intentions.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.91-121
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• 2008

Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce or eCommerce, has become a major business trend in these days. The amount of trade conducted electronically has grown extraordinarily by developing the Internet technology. Most electronic commerce has being conducted between businesses to customers; therefore, the researches with respect to e-commerce are to find customer's needs, behaviors through statistical methods. However, the statistical researches, mostly based on a questionnaire, are the static researches, They can tell us the dynamic relationships between initial purchasing and repurchasing. Therefore, this study proposes dynamic research model for analyzing the cause of initial purchasing and repurchasing. This paper is based on the System-Dynamic theory, using the powerful simulation model with some restriction, The restrictions are based on the theory TAM(Technology Acceptance Model), PAM, and TPB(Theory of Planned Behavior). This article investigates not only the customer's purchasing and repurchasing behavior by passing of time but also the interactive effects to one another. This research model has six scenarios and three steps for analyzing customer behaviors. The first step is the research of purchasing situations. The second step is the research of repurchasing situations. Finally, the third step is to study the relationship between initial purchasing and repurchasing. The purpose of six scenarios is to find the customer's purchasing patterns according to the environmental changes. We set six variables in these scenarios by (1) changing the number of products; (2) changing the number of contents in on-line shopping malls; (3) having multimedia files or not in the shopping mall web sites; (4) grading on-line communities; (5) changing the qualities of products; (6) changing the customer's degree of confidence on products. First three variables are applied to study customer's purchasing behavior, and the other variables are applied to repurchasing behavior study. Through the simulation study, this paper presents some inter-relational result about customer purchasing behaviors, For example, Active community actions are not the increasing factor of purchasing but the increasing factor of word of mouth effect, Additionally. The higher products' quality, the more word of mouth effects increase. The number of products and contents on the web sites have same influence on people's buying behaviors. All simulation methods in this paper is not only display the result of each scenario but also find how to affect each other. Hence, electronic commerce firm can make more realistic marketing strategy about consumer behavior through this dynamic simulation research. Moreover, dynamic analysis method can predict the results which help the decision of marketing strategy by using the time-line graph. Consequently, this dynamic simulation analysis could be a useful research model to make firm's competitive advantage. However, this simulation model needs more further study. With respect to reality, this simulation model has some limitations. There are some missing factors which affect customer's buying behaviors in this model. The first missing factor is the customer's degree of recognition of brands. The second factor is the degree of customer satisfaction. The third factor is the power of word of mouth in the specific region. Generally, word of mouth affects significantly on a region's culture, even people's buying behaviors. The last missing factor is the user interface environment in the internet or other on-line shopping tools. In order to get more realistic result, these factors might be essential matters to make better research in the future studies.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.186-201
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• 2013

This study investigates the effects of information type, direction of information, method of suggestion, tie strength, and interactions among these variables on the acceptance and diffusion of fashion product information in the mobile Facebook environment. Two subsequent studies were conducted to test the relationships among mobile SNS WOM factors. Two independent on-line surveys were implemented. Six hundred forty consumers aged between 20 and 39 were recruited for Study 1, and four hundred and eighty for Study 2. We manipulated the WOM delivery situation by information type (factual/evaluative), information directionality (positive/negative), tie-strength (strong/weak), and information presentation method (text/image/rink). Eight scenarios were developed and randomly assigned to the research participants. Frequency analysis, reliability, factor analysis, regression analysis, and ANOVA were implemented using SPSS 18.0. The Analysis of experiment data produced interesting results. Most WOM factors (including the information type, information presentation method, and tie strength) influence WOM acceptance; however, only the tie strength effected WOM activity. It was also proven that people are prone to accept information that is more realistic, objective, and negative, and they tend to accept information with visual factors, such as images and video clips rather than a simple text message. In this study, we offer a practical perspective to fashion industry and marketers who have an interest in SNS marketing. We have defined the distinct characteristics of mobile WOM that have been formed by a combination of former on/off-line WOM characteristics. To examine the moderating roles of two types of consumer innovativeness, fashion innovativeness and technology innovativeness were also measured and found to have significant moderating effects between mobile SNS WOM factors and their consequences. The paper concludes with a discussion on managerial implications and limitations.

• Journal of Digital Contents Society
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.1109-1118
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• 2017

With mobile payment always at the center of the fintech craze all over the world, many countries led by China, India, England and Brazil are dedicated to activating and supplying online and offline mobile payment services, securing competitive advantage in the global mobile payment market. However, Korea that had proudly considered itself as an IT power was crowded out of the top 10 ranking, falling behind even Australia, Mexico and Germany. Therefore, this study conducted an empirical research to measure the word-of-mouth intention of general consumers using offline mobile payment service in Korea. Furthermore, it comparatively analyzed the world's most powerful country, China, in mobile payment services, and analyzed the difference in consumer perception between Korea and China.