• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.88-98
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• 2024

With the growing preference among Chinese consumers for purchasing beauty products through social media networks (SNS), influencer marketing has recently emerged as a crucial strategy for maximizing word-of-mouth effects. This study aims to ascertain the impact of SNS beauty influencers' characteristics on trustworthiness and consumers' intentions to engage in word-of-mouth promotion. Furthermore, the study seeks to explore the moderating role of consumer involvement in the relationship between SNS beauty influencer characteristics and the trust consumers place in them. As part of an empirical analysis, an online survey was administered to 259 Chinese female consumers who had previously purchased beauty products through influencers on SNS. The data gathered were scrutinized by conducting multiple and hierarchical regression analysis to test the proposed hypotheses. The findings indicated that the attributes of "expertise,"' "intimacy," and "homogeneity" in SNS beauty influencers significantly affect influencer trust, whereas "charm" does not have a significant impact. Moreover, consumer involvement was found to moderate the relationship between SNS beauty influencer characteristics (expertise, intimacy, charm, and homogeneity) and influencer trust. Additionally, influencer trust positively influenced the intention to engage in word-of-mouth activities. These findings signify that leveraging influencers possessing qualities such as expertise, intimacy, and homogeneity can help enhance product exposure, popularity, and sales of the beauty industry. This study contributes valuable insights into the strategic utilization of influencer characteristics in the beauty industry and digital marketing, highlighting their pivotalrole in consumer engagement and the success of marketing strategies.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.49-58
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• 2010

Corporate social responsibility has become a very important issue for researchers (Greenfield, 2004; Maignan & Ralston, 2002; McWilliams et al., 2006; Pearce & Doh 2005), and many consider it necessary for businesses to define their role in society and apply social and ethical standards to their businesses (Lichtenstein et al., 2004). As a result, a significant number of retailers have adopted CSR as a strategic tool to promote their businesses. To this end, this study sought to discover U.S. consumers' attitudes and behavior in ethical purchasing and consumption based on their subjective perception and evaluation of a retailer. The objectives of this study include: 1) determine the participants awareness of retailers corporate social responsibility; 2) assess how participants evaluate retailers corporate social responsibility; 3) examine whether participants evaluation process of retailers CSR influence their attitude toward the retailer; and 4) assess if participants attitude toward the retailers CSR influence their purchase behavior. This study does not focus on actual retailers' CSR performance because a consumer's decision making process is based on an individual assessment not an actual fact. This study examines US college students' awareness and evaluations of retailers' corporate social responsibility (CSR). Fifty six college students at a major Southeastern university participated in the study. The age of the participants ranged from 18 to 26 years old. Content analysis was conducted with open coding and focused coding. Over 100 single-spaced pages of written responses were collected and analyzed. Two steps of coding (i.e., open coding and focused coding) were conducted (Esterberg, 2002). Coding results and analytic memos were used to understand participants' awareness of CSR and their ethical purchasing behavior supported through the selection and inclusion of direct quotes that were extracted from the written responses. Names used here are pseudonyms to protect confidentiality of participants. Participants were asked to write about retailers, their aware-ness of CSR issues, and to evaluate a retailer's CSR performance. A majority (n = 28) of respondents indicated their awareness of CSR but have not felt the need to act on this issue. Few (n=8) indicated that they are aware of this issue but not greatly concerned. Findings suggest that when college students evaluate retailers' CSR performance, they use three dimensions of CSR: employee support, community support, and environmental support. Employee treatment and support were found as an important criterion in evaluation of retailers' CSR. Respondents indicated that their good experience with a retailer as an employee made them have a positive perception and attitude toward the retailer. Regarding employee support four themes emerged: employee rewards and incentives based on performance, working environment, employee education and training program, and employee and family discounts. Well organized rewards and incentives were mentioned as an important attribute. The factors related to the working environment included: how well retailers follow the rules related to working hours, lunch time and breaks was also one of the most mentioned attributes. Regarding community support, three themes emerged: contributing a percentage of sales to the local community, financial contribution to charity organizations, and events for community support. Regarding environments, two themes emerged: recycling and selling organic or green products. It was mentioned in the responses that retailers are trying to do what they can to be environmentally friendly. One respondent mentioned that the company is creating stores that have an environmentally friendly design. Information about what the company does to help the environment can easily be found on the company’s website as well. Respondents have also noticed that the stores are starting to offer products that are organic and environmentally friendly. A retailer was also mentioned by a respondent in this category in reference to how the company uses eco-friendly cups and how they are helping to rebuild homes in New Orleans. The respondents noticed that a retailer offers reusable bags for their consumers to purchase. One respondent stated that a retailer uses its products to help the environment, through offering organic cotton. After thorough analysis of responses, we found that a participant's evaluation of a retailers' CSR influenced their attitudes towards retailers. However, there was a significant gap between attitudes and purchasing behavior. Although the participants had positive attitudes toward retailers CSR, the lack of funds and time influenced their purchase behavior. Overall, half (n=28) of the respondents mentioned that CSR performance affects their purchasing decisions making when shopping. Findings from this study provide support for retailers to consider their corporate social responsibility when developing their image with the consumer. This study implied that consumers evaluate retailers based on employee, community and environmental support. The evaluation, attitude and purchase behavior of consumers seem to be intertwined. That is, evaluation is based on the knowledge the consumer has of the retailers CSR. That knowledge may influence their attitude toward the retailer and thus influence their purchase behavior. Participants also indicated that having CSR makes them think highly of the retailer, but it does not influence their purchase behavior. Price and convenience seem to surpass the importance of CSR among the participants. Implications, recommendations for future research, and limitations of the study are also discussed.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.93-111
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• 2013

As Internet and information technology (IT) continues to develop and evolve, the issue of big data has emerged at the foreground of scholarly and industrial attention. Big data is generally defined as data that exceed the range that can be collected, stored, managed and analyzed by existing conventional information systems and it also refers to the new technologies designed to effectively extract values from such data. With the widespread dissemination of IT systems, continual efforts have been made in various fields of industry such as R&D, manufacturing, and finance to collect and analyze immense quantities of data in order to extract meaningful information and to use this information to solve various problems. Since IT has converged with various industries in many aspects, digital data are now being generated at a remarkably accelerating rate while developments in state-of-the-art technology have led to continual enhancements in system performance. The types of big data that are currently receiving the most attention include information available within companies, such as information on consumer characteristics, information on purchase records, logistics information and log information indicating the usage of products and services by consumers, as well as information accumulated outside companies, such as information on the web search traffic of online users, social network information, and patent information. Among these various types of big data, web searches performed by online users constitute one of the most effective and important sources of information for marketing purposes because consumers search for information on the internet in order to make efficient and rational choices. Recently, Google has provided public access to its information on the web search traffic of online users through a service named Google Trends. Research that uses this web search traffic information to analyze the information search behavior of online users is now receiving much attention in academia and in fields of industry. Studies using web search traffic information can be broadly classified into two fields. The first field consists of empirical demonstrations that show how web search information can be used to forecast social phenomena, the purchasing power of consumers, the outcomes of political elections, etc. The other field focuses on using web search traffic information to observe consumer behavior, identifying the attributes of a product that consumers regard as important or tracking changes on consumers' expectations, for example, but relatively less research has been completed in this field. In particular, to the extent of our knowledge, hardly any studies related to brands have yet attempted to use web search traffic information to analyze the factors that influence consumers' purchasing activities. This study aims to demonstrate that consumers' web search traffic information can be used to derive the relations among brands and the relations between an individual brand and product attributes. When consumers input their search words on the web, they may use a single keyword for the search, but they also often input multiple keywords to seek related information (this is referred to as simultaneous searching). A consumer performs a simultaneous search either to simultaneously compare two product brands to obtain information on their similarities and differences, or to acquire more in-depth information about a specific attribute in a specific brand. Web search traffic information shows that the quantity of simultaneous searches using certain keywords increases when the relation is closer in the consumer's mind and it will be possible to derive the relations between each of the keywords by collecting this relational data and subjecting it to network analysis. Accordingly, this study proposes a method of analyzing how brands are positioned by consumers and what relationships exist between product attributes and an individual brand, using simultaneous search traffic information. It also presents case studies demonstrating the actual application of this method, with a focus on tablets, belonging to innovative product groups.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.56 no.3
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• pp.315-329
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• 2023

Purpose: This study examined the meal-kit consumption practices of adults in their 20s and 30s and analyzed the properties that should be given priority for improvement among the selection attributes to improve the quality of meal-kits. Methods: Statistical analyses were conducted using the SPSS program (ver. 28.0) for χ²-test, t-test, one-way analysis of variance, Duncan's multiple range test, factor analysis, and Importance-Satisfaction Analysis (ISA). Results: Of the 249 subjects surveyed, 85.5% had some experience of purchasing meal-kits, with significantly more females than males (p < 0.01), significantly more married people than single people (p < 0.05), significantly more employed people than unemployed people (p < 0.05). Meal-kits were purchased most frequently for meals (60.6%), from discount stores or supermarkets (44.6%), and priced between 10,000 won and 20,000 won per person (46.9%). The overall satisfaction with meal-kits was 4.1 out of 5.0 points. The frequency of purchases was Korean soup dishes (69.5%), Korean main dishes (47.4%), and Korean street snacks (46.9%). Factor analysis of the meal-kit selection attributes revealed, 4 factors: 'quality of food,' 'packaging and diversity,' 'quality of meal-kit,' and 'convenience and price.' Compared to single-person households, multi-person households placed significantly higher importance on the 'quality of food,' 'packaging and diversity,' and 'quality of meal-kit.' The factor, 'packaging and diversity' were significantly higher in the importance evaluation scores for females (p < 0.01), married people (p < 0.05), and people in their 30s (p < 0.05) among meal-kit consumers. According to the ISA results, a critical aspect that meal-kit manufacturers or sellers should strengthen is 'price.' Conclusion: Meal-kit products will need to be developed for various purposes that offer high value for money that can satisfy the consumers' needs to improve the satisfaction of meal-kit consumers.

• Korean journal of food and cookery science
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.670-676
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• 2002

Four different brands of commercial and a home-made jujube tea were analyzed for physicochemical properties (sugar content, acidity, color, viscosity, transparency, texture) and sensory characteristics by using 7-point scoring test from 18 experienced panel members. Also, the opinion of food and nutrition specialists on the commercial jujube teas were assessed using a questionnaire, which were hand-delivered to 530 subjects consisting of university students and faculties of Department of Food and Nutrition at 8 cities(Seoul, Incheon, Youngin. Taejon, Chungju, Taegu, Kwangiu, Pusan) in Korea and the complete data of 328 subjects were statistically analyzed using SPSS Program for Window. The questionnaire consisted of socio-demographics, frequency and occasion of purchasing, opinion of quality and improvement points, and sensory characteristics. Commercial jujube teas (3 different brand) were lower in sugar content, pH, transparency, color (Hunter L, a and b value), and viscosity than the home-made one, whereas only one brand was higher in viscosity and lower in transparency than home-made one. Also, overall preference for commercial jujube teas was significantly love. than that for home-made one (p＜0.05). Especially, the scores of overall preference for 3 commercial jujube teas (2.1-3.3) were much lower than that of home-made one (6.1). Points to be improved for commercial jujube teas were indicated as the amount of jujube (30.0%), taste (23.8%), sweetness (22.0%), and flavor (14.4%) in order. Sensory attributes showing positive correlations with overall preference of jujube tea were the taste(0.566), amount of jujube(0.449), and flavor(0.335).

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.103-114
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• 2020

On-arrival duty free will prevent Korean outbound passengers from keeping the duty free items they purchased at the departure during their travel. Most Korean tourists have requested the airport authority to install on-arrival duty free since the grand-opening of Incheon int'l airport. Considering the fierce hub airport competition in the North East Asian region, the Korean government's decision to install on-arrival duty free is regarded as a well-timed intervention. The purpose of the research was to analyze sales correlation based on a comparison of sales of both departure and on-arrival duty free and to propose an administrative implication. Compared to business conglomerates running departure duty free, on-arrival duty free operators, who are small or medium companies, have weakness in product composition, marketing, and merchandising capabilities. According to the analysis, outbound passengers, who purchased fashion accessories and leather products at the departure duty free, tended to purchase cosmetics/perfume or liquor on the arrival duty free. Such complementary purchasing behavior of passengers showed there is barely a negative correlation between departure and on-arrival duty free.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.6 no.6
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• pp.221-229
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• 2015

This study aims to identify and analyze the main factors that determine the properties and buying behavior in the premium bottled select and analyze the degree of impact on the relevant variables are premium water demand. When applied to the truncated negative binomial model to derive the study results: The results of estimating the variables that affect the demand for premium mineral water are as follows. Premium bottled water demand of this group my purchases with a choice between buying behavior variables are significantly higher than the relative population. To also do a good ingredient water, it appeared to be on a statistically significant positive effect on the demand for the more groups you purchase a premium bottled water for the purpose of receiving special feeling, just buy purpose is called to drinking water does not significantly affect to be analyzed. Among demographic characteristics it showed that demand for premium bottled water purchases are significantly higher in women than in men, professional / clerical job, such as the military, college graduates were more consumer research as significant in comparison to the relative population. Taste and package design factors of premium bottled mineral water among the select attribute factors are having a significant positive impact on the purchasing demand, local conditions and cost factors have been estimated to be insignificant.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.47-51
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• 2003

To evaluate the quality of commercial ginger tea, we compared physicochemical (sugar content, pH, acidity, color, viscosity, transparancy) and sensory (7-point scoring test, 18 experienced panel members) characteristics of commercial ginger tea with home-made one. Additionally, we assessed the opinion of Food and Nutrition specialists, about commercial ginger tea. Questionaires were hand delivered to 530 subjects consisted of University students and faculties of Department of Food and Nutrition at 8 cities (Seoul, Incheon, Youngin, Taejon, Chungju, Taegu, Kwangju, Pusan) in Korea and the complete data of 328 subjects were statistically analyzed using SPSS Program for Window (mean, ANOVA, $\chi$$^2$). The questionaires were consisted of sociodemographics, frequency and occasion of purchasing, opinion of quality and improvement points. Commercial ginger tea was lower in transparancy, Hunter color (L and b value) and viscosity than home-made one. However, commercial tea was not significantly different in sugar content, pH, acidity and Hunter color a value compared to home-made one. Also, among sensory attributes, over-all preference and flavor, sweetness were not significantly different between commercial and home - made one, However, scores of color, taste and pungency of home-made ginger tea were significantly higher than commercial one (p<0.05). Factors to be improved for commercial ginger tea were in the order of ginger content (28.6%), flavor (25.2%) and sweetness (24.5%).

• Smart Media Journal
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.54-62
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• 2021

As the volume of online e-commerce transactions increases, items diversify and the classification becomes complicated. E-commerce platforms that specialize in dealing only in one area are emerging, and the area is diversifying. Three problems were identified by researching the craft online e-commerce platform, one of the various types of professional e-commerce platforms. First of all, although craft materials are diversified and complex on the platform, the existing craft e-commerce system is fragmented in structure to categorize complex crafts, making it difficult to accurately present search results that meet various criteria. Second, although appearance is the main reason for purchasing artifacts, it is rare for users to categorize them according to appearance, so they have to judge and filter each work directly. Finally, the language entered when searching for artifacts by non-technical experts is not reflected in the language used to categorize artifacts in the taxonomic system, so the language used for searching is highly accurate. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to add and consider complex attributes in the field of technology to meet the search criteria. Properties to be added must include the main appearance in the search for artifacts. In addition, the government aims to develop a taxonomic system that can reflect non-experts' search languages in the search of works through artificial intelligence natural language processing technology.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.27-57
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• 2008

Many consumers enjoy the challenge of purchasing a brand that matches well with their own values and personalities (for example, Ko et al., 2008; Ko et al., 2006). Therefore, the personalities of consumers can impact on the final selection of a brand and its brand personality in two ways: first, the consumers may incline to purchase a brand or a product that reflects their own personalities; second, consumers tend to choose a company that has similar brand personalities to those brands that are being promoted. Therefore, the objectives of this study are following: 1. Is there any empirical relationship between a consumer's personality and the personality of a brand that he or she chooses? 2. Can a corporate brand be differentiated by the brand personality? In short, consumers are more likely to hold favorable attitudes towards those brands that match their own personality and will most probably purchase those brands matching well with their personality. For example, Matzler et al. (2006) found that extraversion and openness were positively related to hedonic product value; and that the personality traits directly (openness) and indirectly (extraversion, via hedonic value) influenced brand effects, which in turn droved attitudinal and purchase loyalty. Based on the above discussion, the following hypotheses are proposed: Hypothesis 1: the personality of a consumer is related to the brand personality of a product/corporate that he/she purchases. Kuksov (2007) and Wernerfelt (1990) argued that brands as a symbolic language allowed consumers to communicate their types to each other and postulated that consumers had a certain value of communicating their types to each other. Therefore, how brand meanings are established, and how a firm communicate with consumers about the meanings of the brand are interesting topics for research (for example, Escalas and Bettman, 2005; McCracken, 1989; Moon, 2007). Hence, the following hypothesis is proposed: Hypothesis 2: A corporate brand identity is differentiated by the brand personality. And there are significant differences among companies. A questionnaire was developed for collecting empirical measures of the Big-Five personality traits and brand personality variables. A survey was conducted to the online access panel members through the Internet during December 2007 in Korea. In total, 500 respondents completed the questionnaire, and considered as useable. Personality constructs were measured using the Five-factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) scale and a total of 30 items were actually utilized. Brand personality was measured using the five-dimension scale developed by Aaker (1997). A total of 17 items were actually utilized. The seven-point Likert-type scale was the format of responses, for example, from 1 indicating strongly disagreed to 7 for strongly agreed. The Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS) was used for an empirical testing of the model, and the Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) was applied to estimate numerical values for the components in the model. To diagnose the presence of distribution problems in the data and to gauge their effects on the parameter estimates, bootstapping method was used. The results of the hypothesis-1 test empirically show that there exit certain causality relationship between a consumer's personality and the brand personality of the consumer's choice. Thus, the consumer's personality has an impact on consumer's final selection of a brand that has a brand personality matches well with their own personalities. In other words, the consumers are inclined to purchase a brand that reflects their own personalities and tend to choose a company that has similar brand personalities to those of the brand being promoted. The results of this study further suggest that certain dimensions of the brand personality cause consumers to have preference to certain (corporate) brands. For example, the conscientiousness, neuroticism, and extraversion of the consumer personality have positively related to a selection of "ruggedness" characteristics of the brand personality. Consumers who possess that personality dimension seek for matching with certain brand personality dimensions. Results of the hypothesis-2 test show that the average "ruggedness" attributes of the brand personality differ significantly among Korean automobile manufacturers. However, the result of ANOVA also indicates that there are no significant differences in the mean values among manufacturers for the "sophistication," "excitement," "competence" and "sincerity" attributes of the corporate brand personality. The tight link between what a firm is and its corporate brand means that there is far less room for marketing communications than there is with products and brands. Consequently, successful corporate brand strategies must position the organization within the boundaries of what is acceptable, while at the same time differentiating the organization from its competitors.