• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
• /
• v.20 no.2
• /
• pp.208-218
• /
• 2010

Internet has grown fast and become one of the most important retail channels now. Various types of Internet retailers, hereafter etailers, have been introduced so far and as one type of Internet shopping mall, 'surrogate Internet shopping mall' has been prosperous and attracting consumers in the domestic market. Surrogate Internet shopping mall is a unique type of etailer that globally purchases well-known brand goods that are not imported in the market, completes delivery in the favor of individual buyers, and collects fees for these specific services. The consumers, who are usually interested in purchasing high-end and unique but not eligible brands, have difficulties to purchase these items overseas directly from the retailers or brands in other countries due to worries of payment failure and no address available for their usually domestic only delivery. In Korea, both numbers of surrogate Internet shopping malls and the magnitude of sales have been growing rapidly up to more than 430 active malls and 500 billion Korean won in 2008 since the population of consumers who want this agent shopping service is also expending. This etail business concept is originated from 'surrogate-mediated purchase' and this type of shopping agent has existed in many different forms and also in wide ranges of context level for quite a long time. As marketers face their individual buyers' representatives instead of a direct contact with them in many occasions, the impact of surrogate shoppers on consumer's decision making has been enormously important and many scholars have explored various range of agent's impact on consumer's purchase decisions in marketing and psychology field. However, not much rigorous research in the Internet commerce has been conveyed yet. Moreover, since as one of the shopping agent surrogate Internet shopping malls specifically connect overseas brands or retailers to domestic consumers, one specific character of the mall's, image of surrogate buying country, where surrogate purchases are conducted in, may play an important role to form consumers' attitude and purchase intention toward products. Furthermore it also possibly affects various dimensions of perceived risk in consumer's information processing. However, though tremendous researches have been carried exploring the effects of diverse dimensions of country of origin, related studies in Internet context has been rarely executed. There have been some studies that prove the positive impact of country of origin on consumer's evaluations as one of information clues in product manufacture descriptions, yet studies detecting the relationship between country image of surrogate buying origin and product evaluations rarely undertaken regarding this specific mall type. Thus, the authors have found it well-worth investigating in this specific retail channel and explored systematic relationships among focal constructs and elaborated their different paths. The authors have proven that country image of surrogate buying origin in the mall, where surrogate malls purchase products in and brings them from for buyers, not only has a positive effect on consumers' product evaluations including attitude and purchase intention but also has a negative effect on all three dimensions of perceived risk: product-related risk, shipping-related risk, and post-purchase risk. Specifically among all the perceived risk, product-related risk which is arisen from high uncertainty of product performance is most affected (${\beta}$= -.30) by negative country image of surrogate buying origin, and also shipping-related risk (${\beta}$= -.18) and post-purchase risk (${\beta}$= -.15) get influenced in order. Its direct effects on product attitude (${\beta}$= .10) and purchase intention (${\beta}$= .14) are also secured. Each of perceived risk dimension is proven to have a negative effect on purchase intention through product attitude as a mediator (${\beta}$= -.57: product-related risk ${\rightarrow}$ product attitude; ${\beta}$= -.24: shipping-related risk ${\rightarrow}$ product attitude; ${\beta}$= -.44: post-purchase risk ${\rightarrow}$ product attitude) as well. From the additional analysis, the paths of consumers' information processing are shown to be different based on their levels of product knowledge. While novice consumers with low level of knowledge consider only perceived risk important, expert consumers with high level of knowledge take both the country image, where surrogate services are conducted in, and perceived risk seriously to build their attitudes and formulate decisions toward products more delicately and systematically, which is in line with previous studies. This study suggests several pieces of academic and practical advice. Precisely, country image of surrogate buying origin does affect on consumer's risk perceptions and behavioral consequences. Therefore a careful selection of surrogate buying origin is recommended. Furthermore, reducing consumers' risk level is required to blossom this new type of retail business whether its consumer are novices or experts. Additionally, since consumer take different paths of elaborating information based on their knowledge levels, sophisticated marketing approaches to each group of consumers are required. For novice buyers strong devices for risk mitigation are needed to induce them to form better attitudes and for experts selections of better and advanced countries as surrogate buying origins are advised while endorsement strategy for the site might work as a reliable information clue to all consumers to mitigate the barriers to purchase goods online. The authors have also explained that the study suffers from some limitations, including generalizability. In future studies, tests of and comparisons among different types of etailers with relevant constructs are recommended to broaden the findings.

• Journal of Distribution Science
• /
• v.7 no.3
• /
• pp.49-69
• /
• 2009

With the proliferation of electronic commerce, online transactions have become a norm. Its enormous potential, however, can be truly realized if consumers feel comfortable facing invisible sellers over the Internet, a virtual business channel. Trust has been identified as a key component in many e-Commerce studies. The purpose of this study is to find out which factors play a major role in building buyer trust and how the build-up trust affects buyer's purchase intention in online used car transactions. Based on the information asymmetry, TAM (Technology Acceptance Model), and the trust theory, our research model includes factors such as a buyer's propensity-to-trust, institutional characteristics (inspection and warranty policy), word-of-mouth referral, perceived size, and perceived benefits as independent variables. The model also includes trust as a mediate variable, purchase intention as a dependent variable, and perceived quality risk as a moderate variable. The research model is tested by analyzing 448 sample data gathered from used car websites. The result shows that the trust has significant effects on the online purchase intention, and institutional characteristics have been identified as one of the most significant factors for trust building in used car websites. For those who perceive quality risk high, actual purchasing behavior occurs only when they have trust on the used car websites, indicating that trust plays a vital role as a mediate variable. This study suggests that buyer trust on the used car websites is important to increase buyer's online purchase behavior.

• Informatization Policy
• /
• v.25 no.2
• /
• pp.20-45
• /
• 2018

This study aims to find the factors of Internet overdependence in adults, through the decision tree analysis model, which is a data mining method using National Information Society Agency's raw data from the survey on Internet overdependence in 2016. As a result of the decision tree analysis, a total 16 nodes of Internet overdependence risk groups were identified. The main predicated variables were the amount of time spent per smart media usage in weekdays; amount of time spent per smart media usage in weekends; experiences of purchasing cash items; percentage of using smart media for leisure; negative personality; percentage of using smart media for information search and utilization; and awareness on good functions of the Internet, all of which in order had greater impact on the risk groups. Users in the highest risk node spent the smart media for more than 5 minutes per use and less than 5~10 minutes in weekdays, had experiences of cash item purchase, and had lower level of awareness on the good functions of the Internet. The analysis led to the following recommendations: First, even a short-time use has higher chances of causing Internet overdependence, and therefore, guidelines need to be developed based on research on the usage behavior rather than the usage time. Second, self-regulation is required because factors that affect overindulgence in games, such as the cash items, increase Internet overdependence. Third, using the Internet for leisure causes higher risk of overdependence and therefore, other means of leisure should be recommended.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
• /
• v.17 no.5
• /
• pp.741-753
• /
• 2015

This study identified factors that influenced fashion consumers' purchase intentions for cross-border online shopping. This study utilized three outshopping motivation dimensions (utilitarian, social, and hedonic) to empirically verify research questions. The moderating effects of consumers' perceived risks between cross-border online shopping motivations and behavioral intention were also tested on Korean female consumers in their 20s to 40s who had experience purchasing fashion goods through a cross-border online shopping channel within a year. The research are as follows. First, the three motivations have positive effects on cross-border online shopping purchase intentions. Fashion consumers are greatly influenced by hedonic motivation compared to utilitarian and social motivations. Second, perceived risks do not negatively influence cross-border online shopping purchase intentions. Finally, there exists moderating effects of perceived risks between utilitarian motivation and cross-border online shopping purchase intentions. This study reveals motivational and moderating factors that influence fashion consumers to shop through a cross-border online shopping channel. It contributes to prior studies by extending the research range of cross-border online shopping into fashion. Marketers and retailers should note that fashion consumers are most influenced by hedonic motivation when shopping in cross-border online malls.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
• /
• 2002.07b
• /
• pp.1331-1334
• /
• 2002

Micropayment is an electronic payment system for small value transaction. It needs to use a little amount of resources, such as communication and computation due to its small value. In other words, the processing cost for the micropayment must be less than the value of the payment. Several kinds of transactions are suitable for micropayment, eg. the purchasing of train tickets or digital newspapers. Since micropayment systems are designed for small-amount payment the key factor for any micropayment system design is believed to be the minimization of resource consumption without compromising the standard security. In this paper, we propose an adaptive agent approach to credit-based micropayment system, which employs the concept of dynamic balancing between the resource consumption and the risk in the system. As a result of the dynamic balancing, our system not only solves the problem of global overspending but also uses fewer amount of resources than existing approaches. Our approach limits the amount of money spent by untrusted customers to all merchants. Thus, our approach provides a boundary of the global overspending. In addition, for trusted customers, our approach requires less scale of communication for verifying authorizations than all existing approaches.

• Journal of Fashion Business
• /
• v.14 no.5
• /
• pp.49-65
• /
• 2010

The purpose of this paper is to derive the categories of negative e-WOM (electronic word of mouth) via consumer review. Disclosing the details of negative e-WOM based consumer reviews has never been done before. For this reason, a content analysis was adopted to provide knowledge and understanding of the phenomenon. This paper analyzes the content of 630 consumer reviews posted on the open market internet site, www.auction.co.kr. The analysis was conducted from October 20th, 2008 to March 10th, 2009. The results indicated that the negative e-WOM based consumer reviews can be divided into two categories: the cognitive evaluation and the expression of consumer's emotion. The category of cognitive evaluation is consisted of negative e-WOM of product, negative e-WOM of service, and warning about the risk of purchasing products. The category of expressing consumers' emotion are composed of venting customers' dissatisfaction and passive response of dissatisfaction. Investigating the details of negative e-WOM has a number of implications. Most importantly, the results revealed multidimensional structure of negative e-WOM. This understanding of negative e-WOM communication allows marketers to improve products and services that better meet customers' current and future needs.

• Journal of Fashion Business
• /
• v.5 no.4
• /
• pp.37-55
• /
• 2001

This study put its major concern in consumer behavior during a purchase of fashion products through the Internet marketing channels. Therefore, it investigated the Internet shopping and tried to find the reasons why clothes shopping through the Internet marketing channels is not popular enough. Then, alternative marketing strategies would be suggested which is accessible from the relationship marketing approach. The study adopted a qualitative research method to implement those purposes. In-depth interviews were conducted with the interviewees who had an experience of buying a fashion merchandise through the Internet or who had such an intention. And the information on stages of decision-making process and actual purchase was obtained by participating in and observing the process. The results revealed stages of decision-making in purchasing a fashion product through the Internet channels, the process of relationship development, and the elements of relationship marketing which affect purchase intention. The elements of relationship marketing to promote a purchase of a clothing product via the Internet marketing channels included convenience; communication and socal experience; sensual information; risk acknowledgement and pursuit for safety; and usage of complexed marketing channels. Based on these, a few strategic points such as remote reality, database of communication basis, strengthening individualized services, and development of complex marketing channels were suggested.

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
• /
• v.39 no.2
• /
• pp.217-233
• /
• 2011

This paper introduces service failure management on internet shopping environment. The purpose of this study is to find and improve service failure modes at the time of customer's complaint thereby reducing that. To achieve this purpose, this study combines the Service Blueprint which describes the online shopping process and FMEA which finds each encounter of service failures and proposes how to recover them. First of all this study generates internet shopping process using Service Blueprint then matches customer's purchase decision making process and company's service provide process. After this process customer complaint types in real purchasing process are fell in according to their occurrence and more frequently occurred complaint is more risky. Finally 6 Risk Priority Numbers(unfair exchange/return policies, slow response/poor customer service support, purchase arrived later than promised/deliverly service dissatisfaction, dissatisfaction short period to take back/exchange/cancels order, A/S or handle defective item) are extracted and suggest their improvement.

• Journal of Industrial Convergence
• /
• v.2 no.1
• /
• pp.159-186
• /
• 2004

One of the biggest change in the distributive market recently is that the development of private brand is progress actively since consumers purchasing behavior is tend to shift to resonable and practical planned purchase from brand image or brand name. Once the development of private brands is done successfully, the independent merchandising distinguished from other distribution companies is established, store image through customer satisfaction is strengthen and volume of sales and profit are increased. However, the existing studies in this field have not dealt with this matter systematically. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to propose an integrated framework within which to view private brand proneness. Factors found to influence private brand proneness included perceived cost, with private brand, perceived value for money, store fame, perceived risk, perceived quality variation between national and private brand products. Foe empirical analysis, the data were collected from 211 consumers who purchased the private brands in discount store and department store. With the collected survey data, reliability test, factor analysis for validity test and regression analysis for hypotheses test were conducted. Most hypotheses were accepted but on hypotheses were rejected negative relation of perceived cost and private brand proneness. Research results indicate that private brand proneness is affected by perceived value, perceived fame and there are negative relation between private brand proneness and perceived quality variation.

• Nutrition Research and Practice
• /
• v.15 no.3
• /
• pp.346-354
• /
• 2021

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: While the use of food additives in food processing has become a common practice worldwide, consumers' worry about potential hazards has not diminished. The purpose of this study was to identify trends in South Korean parents' perceptions about food additives by analyzing the results of surveys conducted from 2014 to 2018. SUBJECTS/METHODS: We conducted an off-line survey in Korea annually between 2014 and 2018 on perceptions about food additives. The numbers of survey respondents in each year from 2014 to 2018 were 381, 426, 301, 519, and 369, respectively. Our consumer respondents were parents of elementary-school-aged children. RESULTS: The ratios of respondents perceiving "food safety" as the most important factor in purchasing processed foods and "food additives" as the biggest threat to food safety have decreased over the years. However, most consumers still have negative perceptions of food additives. Additionally, among consumers lower confidence in or trust of the Korean government continued throughout the study period and appeared to be the main problem that needs to be overcome. CONCLUSIONS: This study found that Korean parents are still troubled by food additives. Consumers' confidence in the government needs to be increased through public communications. More multifaceted educational programs communicating scientific knowledge of food additives are needed in order to correct consumers' misperceptions.