• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.51-89
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• 2007

INTRODUCTION Due to the high broadband internet penetration rate and its group-oriented culture, various types of online communities operate in Korea. This study use 'Uses and Gratification Approach, and argue that members' usage-needs satisfaction with brand community is an important factor for promoting community commitment. Based on previous studies identifying the effect of brand image on consumers' responses to various marketing stimuli, this study hypothesizes that brand image can be a moderate variable affecting the relationship between usage-needs satisfaction with brand community and members' commitment to brand community. This study analyzes the influence of usage-needs satisfaction on brand community commitment and how apparel brand image affects the relationships between usage-needs satisfactions and community commitments. The hypotheses of this study are proposed as follows. H1-3: The usage-needs satisfaction of apparel brand community (interest, transaction, relationship needs) influences emotional (H1), continuous (H2), and normative (H3) commitments to apparel brand communities. H4-6: Apparel brand image has a moderating effect on the relationship between usage-needs satisfaction and emotional (H4), continuous (H5), and normative (H6) commitments to apparel brand communities. METHODS Brand communities founded by non-company affiliates were excluded and emphasis was placed instead on communities created by apparel brand companies. Among casual apparel brands registered in 6 Korean portal sites in August 2003, a total of 9 casual apparel brand online communities were chosen, depending on the level of community activity and apparel brand image. Data from 317 community members were analyzed by exploratory factor analysis, moderated regression analysis, ANOVA, and scheffe test. Among 317 respondents answered an online html-type questionnaire, 80.5% were between 16 to 25 years old. There were a total of 150 respondents from apparel brand communities(n=3) recording higher-than-average brand image scores (Mean > 3.75) and a total of 162 respondents from apparel brand communities(n=6) recording lower-than-average brand image scores(Mean < 3.75). In this study, brand community commitment was measured by a 5-point Likert scale: emotional, continuous and normative commitment. The degree of usage-needs satisfaction (interest, transaction, relationship needs) was measured on a 5-point Likert scale. The level of brand image was measured by a 5-point Likert scale: strength, favorability, and uniqueness of brand associations. RESULTS In the results of exploratory factor analysis, the three usage-needs satisfactions with brand community were classified as interest, transaction, and relationship needs. Brand community commitment was also divided into the multi-dimensional factors: emotional, continuous, and normative commitments. The regression analysis (using a stepwise method) was used to test the influence of 3 independent variables (interest-needs satisfaction, transaction-needs, and relationship-needs satisfactions) on the 3 dependent variables (emotional, continuous and normative commitments). The three types of usage-needs satisfactions are positively associated with the three types of commitments to apparel brand communities. Therefore, hypothesis 1, 2, and 3 were significantly supported. Moderating effects of apparel brand image on the relationship between usage-needs satisfaction and brand community commitments were tested by moderated regression analysis. The statistics result showed that the influence of transaction-needs on emotional commitment was significantly moderated by apparel brand image. In addition, apparel brand image had moderating effects on the relationship between relationship-needs satisfaction and emotional, continuous and normative commitments to apparel brand communities. However, there were not significant moderate effects of apparel brand image on the relationships between interest-needs satisfaction and 3 types of commitments (emotional, continuous and normative commitments) to apparel brand communities. In addition, the influences of transaction-needs satisfaction on 2 types of commitments (continuous and normative commitments) were not significantly moderated by apparel brand image. Therefore, hypothesis 4, 5 and 6 were partially supported. To explain the moderating effects of apparel brand image, four cross-tabulated groups were made by averages of usage-needs satisfaction (interest-needs satisfaction avg. M=3.09, transaction-needs satisfaction avg. M=3.46, relationship-needs satisfaction M=1.62) and the average apparel brand image (M=3.75). The average scores of commitments in each classified group are presented in Tables and Figures. There were significant differences among four groups. As can be seen from the results of scheffe test on the tables, emotional commitment in community group with high brand image was higher than one in community group with low brand image when transaction-needs satisfaction was high. However, when transaction-needs satisfaction was low, there was not any difference between the community group with high brand image and community group with low brand image regarding emotional commitment to apparel brand communities. It means that emotional commitment didn't increase significantly without high satisfaction of transaction-needs, despite the high apparel brand image. In addition, when apparel brand image was low, increase in transaction-needs did not lead to the increase in emotional commitment. Therefore, the significant relationship between transaction-needs satisfaction and emotional commitment was found in only brand communities with high apparel brand image, and the moderating effect of apparel brand image on this relationship between two variables was found in the communities with high satisfaction of transaction-needs only. Statistics results showed that the level of emotional commitment is related to the satisfaction level of transaction-needs, while overall response is related to the level of apparel brand image. We also found that the role of apparel brand image as a moderating factor was limited by the level of transaction-needs satisfaction. In addition, relationship-needs satisfaction brought significant increase in emotional commitment in both community groups (high and low levels of brand image), and the effect of apparel brand image on emotional commitment was significant in both community groups (high and low levels of relationship-needs satisfaction). Especially, the effect of brand image was greater when the level of relationship-needs satisfaction was high. in contrast, increase in emotional commitment responding to increase in relationship-needs satisfaction was greater when apparel brand image is high. The significant influences of relationship-needs satisfaction on community commitments (continuous and normative commitments) were found regardless of apparel brand image(in both community groups with low and high brand image). However, the effects of apparel brand image on continuous and normative commitments were found in only community group with high satisfaction level of relationship-needs. In the case of communities with low satisfaction levels of relationship needs, apparel brand image marginally increases continuous and normative commitments. Therefore, we could not find the moderating effect of apparel brand image on the relationship between relationship-needs satisfaction and continuous and normative commitments in community groups with low satisfaction levels of relationship needs, CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS From the results of this study, we draw several conclusions; First, the increases in usage-needs satisfactions through apparel brand communities result in the increases in commitments to apparel brand communities, wheres the degrees of such relationship depends on the level of apparel brand image. That is, apparel brand image is a moderating factor strengthening the relationship between usage-needs satisfaction and commitment to apparel brand communities. In addition, the effect of apparel brand image differs, depending on the level and types of community usage-needs satisfactions. Therefore, marketers of apparel brand companies must determine the appropriate usage-needs, depending on the type of commitment they wish to increase and the level of their apparel brand image, to promote member's commitments to apparel brand communities. Especially, relationship-needs satisfaction was very important factor for increasing emotional, continuous and normative commitments to communities. However the level of relationship-needs satisfaction was lower than interest-needs and transaction-needs. satisfaction. According to previous study on apparel brand communities, relationship-need satisfaction was strongly related to member's intention of participation in their communities. Therefore, marketers need to develope various strategies in order to increase the relationship- needs as well as interest and transaction needs. In addition, despite continuous commitment was higher than emotional and normative commitments, all types of commitments to apparel brand communities had scores lower than 3.0 that was mid point in 5-point scale. A Korean study reported that the level of members' commitment to apparel brand community influenced customers' identification with a brand and brand purchasing behavior. Therefore, marketers should try to increase members' usage-needs satisfaction and apparel brand image as the necessary conditions for bringing about community commitments. Second, marketers should understand that they should keep in mind that increasing the level of community usage needs (transaction and relationship) is most effective in raising commitment when the level of apparel brand image is high, and that increasing usage needs (transaction needs) satisfaction in communities with low brand image might not be as effective as anticipated. Therefore, apparel companies with desirable brand image such as luxury designer goods firms need to create formal online brand communities (as opposed to informal communities with rudimentary online contents) to satisfy transaction and relationship needs systematically. It will create brand equity through consumers' increased emotional, continuous and normative commitments. Even though apparel brand is very famous, emotional commitment to apparel brand communities cannot be easily increased without transaction-needs satisfaction. Therefore famous fashion brand companies should focus on developing various marketing strategies to increase transaction-needs satisfaction.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.179-200
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• 2019

Word-of-mouth (WoM) is defined by consumer activities that share information concerning consumption. WoM activities have long been recognized as important in corporate marketing processes and have received much attention, especially in the marketing field. Recently, according to the development of the Internet, the way in which people exchange information in online news and online communities has been expanded, and WoM is diversified in terms of word of mouth, score, rating, and liking. Social media makes online users easy access to information and online WoM is considered a key source of information. Although various studies on WoM have been preceded by this phenomenon, there is no meta-analysis study that comprehensively analyzes them. This study proposed a method to extract major researches by applying text mining techniques and to grasp the main issues of researches in order to find the trend of WoM research using scholarly big data. To this end, a total of 4389 documents were collected by the keyword 'Word-of-mouth' from 1941 to 2018 in Scopus (www.scopus.com), a citation database, and the data were refined through preprocessing such as English morphological analysis, stopwords removal, and noun extraction. To carry out this study, we adopted main path analysis (MPA) and word co-occurrence network analysis. MPA detects key researches and is used to track the development trajectory of academic field, and presents the research trend from a macro perspective. For this, we constructed a citation network based on the collected data. The node means a document and the link means a citation relation in citation network. We then detected the key-route main path by applying SPC (Search Path Count) weights. As a result, the main path composed of 30 documents extracted from a citation network. The main path was able to confirm the change of the academic area which was developing along with the change of the times reflecting the industrial change such as various industrial groups. The results of MPA revealed that WoM research was distinguished by five periods: (1) establishment of aspects and critical elements of WoM, (2) relationship analysis between WoM variables, (3) beginning of researches of online WoM, (4) relationship analysis between WoM and purchase, and (5) broadening of topics. It was found that changes within the industry was reflected in the results such as online development and social media. Very recent studies showed that the topics and approaches related WoM were being diversified to circumstantial changes. However, the results showed that even though WoM was used in diverse fields, the main stream of the researches of WoM from the start to the end, was related to marketing and figuring out the influential factors that proliferate WoM. By applying word co-occurrence network analysis, the research trend is presented from a microscopic point of view. Word co-occurrence network was constructed to analyze the relationship between keywords and social network analysis (SNA) was utilized. We divided the data into three periods to investigate the periodic changes and trends in discussion of WoM. SNA showed that Period 1 (1941~2008) consisted of clusters regarding relationship, source, and consumers. Period 2 (2009~2013) contained clusters of satisfaction, community, social networks, review, and internet. Clusters of period 3 (2014~2018) involved satisfaction, medium, review, and interview. The periodic changes of clusters showed transition from offline to online WoM. Media of WoM have become an important factor in spreading the words. This study conducted a quantitative meta-analysis based on scholarly big data regarding WoM. The main contribution of this study is that it provides a micro perspective on the research trend of WoM as well as the macro perspective. The limitation of this study is that the citation network constructed in this study is a network based on the direct citation relation of the collected documents for MPA.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.71-90
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• 2003

Virtual communities have been suggested to play important roles such as attracting customers, building customer loyalty, and leading to commercial transactions. Little research in marketing has focused on virtual communities in spite of its importance indicated by many practitioners and conceptual studies. More specifically, little research has empirically examined factors of customer participation and its consequences. This research investigate if customers' participation motives in virtual communities affect their sense of community and if sense of community affects customers' loyalty towards and purchase intentions from the website offering the community service. One hundred ninety six questionnaires were collected from individuals who have participated in and have been involved in online activities in various virtual communities. Major results of this research can be summarized as follows. First, participation motives employed significantly affected customers' sense of community and more specifically, perceived ease of use and perceived playfulness had a large influence on the customers' sense of community. Second, customers' sense of community positively affected their loyalty toward the community and more specifically, membership and emotional connection had a large influence on loyalty. Third, customers' sense of community did not affect directly their purchase intentions. Fourth, customers' loyalty toward virtual communities had a significant, positive, although marginal, influence on their purchase intentions.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.143-172
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• 2012

While e-commerce market(B2C) grows rapidly, many experts argue that EC(B2C) transactions have not reached its full potential. A notable difference between online and offline consumer markets that is suppressing the growth of EC(B2C) is the decreased presence of human and social elements in the online shopping environments. Generally online shopping lacks human warmth and sociability. In this study, social presence in online shopping mall was proposed as a substitute for face-to-face social interaction in the traditional commerce and author explored what variables affect social presence(human warmth and sociability) on online shopping malls and how human warmth and sociability can influence on online store loyalty. To achieve research objectives, we reviewed literatures related with marketing, psychology and communication research areas. Based on literature review, we proposed a research model on the online shopping mall. To examine the proposed research model, we gathered data by using a self-report questionnaire. Respondents consists of online shoppers with at least five or more times of purchase experience in online shopping malls. Because social presence is a feeling which needs frequent contacts with malls to experience, respondents must have enough purchase experiences. The empirical results are as follows : First, shopping mall's customization efforts influence perceived social presence on the mall significantly. Second, shopping mall's responsiveness influences perceived social presence significantly. Third, perceived activity of community of online shopping mall influences perceived social presence significantly. Mall managers have to activate their customer community to reinforce social presence, resulting in trust building. Finally, perceived social presence influences trust and enjoyment on the mall significantly. And then trust and enjoyment on the mall affect store loyalty significantly. From these findings it can be inferred that perceived social presence appears determinant which is critical to the formation of core variables(trust and loyalty) in existing online shopping papers.

• CRM연구
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.71-88
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• 2009

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the effects of e-CRM activities by the internet shopping mall companies on the purchase activities of purchase customers and the potential customers. The internet shopping companies utilize e-CRM to systematically identify customers' varying demands, and to utilize the results as marketing tools, thus producing a significant effect on the potential customers by generating customer feedback through e-Community. Contrary to their intention, however, cognitive dissonance can occur through e-Community, which may lead to customers' complaints. If these complaints are not properly managed and settled in a timely manner, they can be transferred to other potential customers, and the conformity phenomenon could be created by other complaining customers. Findings obtained through this thesis are as follows: If cognitive disharmony is created by customers who purchased products through the internet shopping malls, this can lead to private complaining behaviors, and subsequently, these behaviors are formed through e-Community. If the internet shopping mall companies do not take any timely and proper measures to intervene in the stage of private complaining behaviors in the first place, these behaviors will immediately escalate into the public complaining behaviors. Furthermore, the complaints will be transferred to other potential customers, ultimately resulting in their swift expansion. In other words, contrary to intention of the internet shopping mall companies, e-CRM does not facilitate the potential customers purchase decision, it rather affects them to postpone or withdraw their purchase decision. Accordingly, the internet shopping mall companies are required to manage e-Community with extreme care, and they should promptly respond to the complaining customers so that e-Community can function properly.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.159-185
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• 2011

We can divide brand experience in the brand community of online blog into the following five types: sensuous experience, emotional experience, cognitive experience, behavioral experience, and relational experience. And this study is aimed at looking into what differences are among the effects those five have on the consumer-brand relationship. Also we wanted to analyse empirically what structural relations this consumer-brand relationship through the whole experience has with brand attachment and brand commitment. The outcome shows that emotional experience, cognitive experience and relational experience affect the consumer-brand relationship but sensuous experience and behavioral experience. And our analysis of what structural relations the consumer-brand relationship through brand experience has with brand attachment and brand commitment revealed that the consumer-brand relationship through brand experience has a direct effect on brand attachment but it doesn't have on brand commitment. Brand commitment was confirmed to be affected only through brand attachment. Finally, this is in agreement with the result of the precedent study that brand commitment is an effect variable of brand attachment.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.9 no.8
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• pp.412-422
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• 2009

With the development of the Internet, online community has been made possible to buy a product in hotel industry. It is expanded gradually the customers buy various banquet services as well as guest rooms or restaurant use. From the 1950s, research has been conducted on trust and various study is achieved in connection with in social psychology or industry marketing. But there is much to be desired on research on trust in on/off-line company and customer's repurchase intention. Verifying the study model and hypothesis established through proceeding research, we would like to know that whether trust in on-line basis can be connected with the trust that already formed about the hotel in off-line basis. Furthermore, how on-line and off-line trust made in hotel industry can affects to customer's repurchase intention. The trust between on-line basis and off-line basis in hotel industry is mutually related. The trust based on off-line hotel company also affects to customer's repurchase intention. But, on-line trust in hotel industry is not related to the customer's repurchase intention.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.93-98
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• 2016

As information technologies are rapidly developed recently, social networking services through a variety of mobile devices and smart screen is becoming popular. SNS is a social networking based services which is online forms from existed offline. SNS can also be used differently which is confused with the online community. A modelling algorithm is a variety of techniques, which are assocoation, clustering, neural networks, and decision trees, etc. By utilizing this technique, it is necessary to study to effectively using the large number of materials. In this paper, we evaluate in particular the performance of the algorithm based on the results of the clustering using Facebook Insights data for the EM algorithm to be evaluated as a good performance in clustering. Through this analysis it was based on the results of the application of the experimental data of the change and the South Australian state library according to the performance of the EM algorithm.

• The Journal of Economics, Marketing and Management
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.51-64
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• 2018

Purpose - This study is intended to look into the influences of restaurant consumers' e-WOM information communication on product perception risk, benefit and WOM effect. Research design, data, and Methodology - To achieve this, a survey was empirically carried out to 426 restaurant consumers. Results - The findings are as follows. First, the influence of e-WOM on product perception risk showed that WOM information sender characteristics, WOM information recipient characteristics and online community had a statistically significant positive influence on product perception risk. Second, the influence of e-WOM on product risk benefit showed that WOM information sender characteristics, WOM information recipient characteristics and online communication had a statistically significant positive influence on product risk benefit. Third, WOM risk perception had a statistically significant positive influence on WOM acceptance. Fourth, WOM risk benefit had a statistically significant positive influence on WOM effect. Conclusions - As for the above-mentioned findings, the communication between e-WOM sender and recipient had a positive influence on the product evaluation and attitude change in the restaurant industry, and the WOM effect had an influence on the financial performance and non-financial performance. The communication attaches importance to a direct using and tasting experience due to the nature of restaurant industry when it is simultaneously performed as a positive mechanism between sender and recipient through each channel of these factors. But the e-WOM culture can lead to the WOM effect when both sender and recipient share the persuasive communicability in reality that diversifies communication methods, having a positive influence on the management performance.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Library and Information Science
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.311-339
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• 2012

The purpose of this study was to propose the expansion plan of outreach services at public libraries. This study explored the nature of outreach services of public libraries. It also compared the types and cases of services conducted by public libraries in Korea and the U.S.A., respectively, through literature research and library websites. The following were proposed: (1) diversity of outreach service; (2) quality improvement of outreach service; (3) consolidation of online outreach service; and (4) human and financial resources, and community partnership.