• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
• /
• v.20 no.3
• /
• pp.262-268
• /
• 2010

Virtual communities (VCs) have developed rapidly, with more and more people participating in them to exchange information and opinions. A virtual community is a group of people who may or may not meet one another face to face, and who exchange words and ideas through the mediation of computer bulletin boards and networks. A business-to-consumer virtual community (B2CVC) is a commercial group that creates a trustworthy environment intended to motivate consumers to be more willing to buy from an online store. B2CVCs create a social atmosphere through information contribution such as recommendations, reviews, and ratings of buyers and sellers. Although the importance of B2CVCs has been recognized, few studies have been conducted to examine members' word-of-mouth behavior within these communities. This study proposes a model of involvement, statistics, trust, "stickiness," and word-of-mouth in a B2CVC and explores the relationships among these elements based on empirical data. The objectives are threefold: (i) to empirically test a B2CVC model that integrates measures of beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors; (ii) to better understand the nature of these relationships, specifically through word-of-mouth as a measure of revenue generation; and (iii) to better understand the role of stickiness of B2CVC in CRM marketing. The model incorporates three key elements concerning community members: (i) their beliefs, measured in terms of their involvement assessment; (ii) their attitudes, measured in terms of their satisfaction and trust; and, (iii) their behavior, measured in terms of site stickiness and their word-of-mouth. Involvement is considered the motivation for consumers to participate in a virtual community. For B2CVC members, information searching and posting have been proposed as the main purpose for their involvement. Satisfaction has been reviewed as an important indicator of a member's overall community evaluation, and conceptualized by different levels of member interactions with their VC. The formation and expansion of a VC depends on the willingness of members to share information and services. Researchers have found that trust is a core component facilitating the anonymous interaction in VCs and e-commerce, and therefore trust-building in VCs has been a common research topic. It is clear that the success of a B2CVC depends on the stickiness of its members to enhance purchasing potential. Opinions communicated and information exchanged between members may represent a type of written word-of-mouth. Therefore, word-of-mouth is one of the primary factors driving the diffusion of B2CVCs across the Internet. Figure 1 presents the research model and hypotheses. The model was tested through the implementation of an online survey of CTrip Travel VC members. A total of 243 collected questionnaires was reduced to 204 usable questionnaires through an empirical process of data cleaning. The study's hypotheses examined the extent to which involvement, satisfaction, and trust influence B2CVC stickiness and members' word-of-mouth. Structural Equation Modeling tested the hypotheses in the analysis, and the structural model fit indices were within accepted thresholds: ${\chi}^2^$/df was 2.76, NFI was .904, IFI was .931, CFI was .930, and RMSEA was .017. Results indicated that involvement has a significant influence on satisfaction (p<0.001, ${\beta}$=0.809). The proportion of variance in satisfaction explained by members' involvement was over half (adjusted $R^2$=0.654), reflecting a strong association. The effect of involvement on trust was also statistically significant (p<0.001, ${\beta}$=0.751), with 57 percent of the variance in trust explained by involvement (adjusted $R^2$=0.563). When the construct "stickiness" was treated as a dependent variable, the proportion of variance explained by the variables of trust and satisfaction was relatively low (adjusted $R^2$=0.331). Satisfaction did have a significant influence on stickiness, with ${\beta}$=0.514. However, unexpectedly, the influence of trust was not even significant (p=0.231, t=1.197), rejecting that proposed hypothesis. The importance of stickiness in the model was more significant because of its effect on e-WOM with ${\beta}$=0.920 (p<0.001). Here, the measures of Stickiness explain over eighty of the variance in e-WOM (Adjusted $R^2$=0.846). Overall, the results of the study supported the hypothesized relationships between members' involvement in a B2CVC and their satisfaction with and trust of it. However, trust, as a traditional measure in behavioral models, has no significant influence on stickiness in the B2CVC environment. This study contributes to the growing body of literature on B2CVCs, specifically addressing gaps in the academic research by integrating measures of beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors in one model. The results provide additional insights to behavioral factors in a B2CVC environment, helping to sort out relationships between traditional measures and relatively new measures. For practitioners, the identification of factors, such as member involvement, that strongly influence B2CVC member satisfaction can help focus technological resources in key areas. Global e-marketers can develop marketing strategies directly targeting B2CVC members. In the global tourism business, they can target Chinese members of a B2CVC by providing special discounts for active community members or developing early adopter programs to encourage stickiness in the community. Future studies are called for, and more sophisticated modeling, to expand the measurement of B2CVC member behavior and to conduct experiments across industries, communities, and cultures.

• Korean Security Journal
• /
• no.34
• /
• pp.7-32
• /
• 2013

The idea of this study was derived from awareness of local governments and police's limitation on attempts to 'creating safe park'. The purpose of this study is to examine current political measures of preventing various types of possible crimes in the park and the limitation of those policies. Furthermore, this study aims to suggest possible explanations to utilize Private Security Sector for the effective and continuous way of managing park safety by considering legal and practical solutions and its expectations. The methods of analysis used in this study are, first, literature review of current park safety management policies. Second, this article examined implications of strategies of those policies throughout the case study of the USA's park safety policy. Third, this study suggested plans of action and role of Private Security Sector to improve park safety. The results present several arguments for the park safety. First, legislation of mandatory crime preventing programme in the early stages of designing park is required. Introducing the 'park special judicial police system' to the major parks for a immediate response to the crime can be one of suggestions. Moreover, proactive police response systems, such as one of the Seoul Metropolitan Police's policies- 'returning safe parks to a citizen' are required. Second, the case study of the USA regarding park safety confirmed that major parks in the USA have rigorous and detailed park regulations. It also showed that those parks take not only preventing measures, but also follow-up measures against crimes. Third, the results suggest creating human resources by contracting out Park Managers and Private Security Sector that have specialized experiences and techniques to prevent crimes and public disorders. Overall in this study, increased citizen's satisfaction level, control of continuous and systematic crimes, the spread of joint-production of public safety, and increased fields of the Private Security Sector are expected from the findings.

• Korean Security Journal
• /
• no.32
• /
• pp.7-32
• /
• 2012

This study aimed to evaluate the relative status using Analytic Hierarchy Process(AHP) on the spiritual factors of the security martial arts for the guards to perform the best security service. There were 540 participants who were students majored in security martial arts, workers for security and specialists of practical and theoretical security martial arts for this study. The exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis were carried out using the selecting data through literature reviews in the level of the factor-extraction about the spiritual characteristics. The specialists' survey was conducted on the relative status among factors using the spiritual concept structure based on the studied above. Selected data was calculated with SPSS 18.0 for windows, AMOS 5.0, and Expert Choice 2000 software. The conclusion can be made through those process above. First, 4 general factors and 20 detailed factors were found as the result of the factor exploration related to the spiritual characteristics of the security martial arts. The result which was verified on Construction validity of searched factors had stable figures on every standard. In other words, the participants for survey on this study "Spiritual characteristic concepts of the security martial arts" can be evaluated it is valid. The general factors of security martial arts' spirit were conceptualized with Psychological spirit, ethical spirit, martial art spirit, practical spirit through the naming process on the general factors of the security martial arts' spiritual characteristic concepts. The detailed factors of security martial arts' spirit were concentration, self-confidence, self-management, immersion, self-esteem in psychological spirit and sacrifice, justice, royalty, peace, sense of duty in ethical spirit and courtesy, toughness, defense, balance of mind and body, bravery in martial arts and responsibility, cooperation, modesty, determination, professionalism in practical spirit of security martial arts. That is, the conceptualization of security martial arts' spirit was verified that it had validity. Second, the hierarchical model of the security martial arts was composed with 4 superordinate concepts and 20 subordinate concepts. As the result of evaluating relative status based on Spiritual characteristics-hierarchy model, the impotance was proven in order of ethical spirit(.482), martial art spirit(.248), practical spirit(.188), psychological spirit(.083). Also the importance related to spiritual characteristics of security martial arts on subordinate concepts was proven in order of sacrifice(.252), courtesy(.110), sense of duty(.108), responsibility(. 073), royalty(.053), toughness(.052), justice(.049), defense(.038), professionalism(.038), determination(.035), cooperation(.029), self-confidence (.026), bravery(.025), self-esteem(.024), balance of mind and body(.023), peace(.019), concentration(.014), modesty(.013), self-management(.011), flow (.007). To sum up, the spiritual factor related to ethics such as sacrifice, justice, royalty, peace, sense of duty was the most important for the security martial arts.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
• /
• v.38 no.5
• /
• pp.53-63
• /
• 2010

The purposes of this study are to classify the characteristics of parks by park use patterns and the understanding of design concepts and to analyze the difference of cognition of design concept between designers and park users. The literature studies and surveys were performed to analyze park use patterns and understanding of design concepts for Seoul Forest Park, Yeouido Park and Seonyudo Park. Several statistical methods have been used such as descriptive analysis and importance-performance analysis. The results of this research are as follows. As the results of an analysis of park use patterns, Seonyudo Park may he qualified as an urban landmark park, while Yeouido Park can he classified as a neighborhood park. Seoul Forest Park bas characteristics of both. Second, the higher frequency of visits generally leads higher preference. Third, the overall cognition of the design concepts of parks shows 3.51 on average, which is comparatively high. The functional concepts are better transmitted to the users compared to abstract concepts. The cognition of the design concepts of each park are evaluated in the higher order of Seonyudo Park, Seoul Forest Park and Yeouido Park. Fourth, the cognition levels of detailed design concepts for each place are lower than the overall design concepts. On the other hand, levels of satisfaction are increased after the design concepts are noticed. It would he necessary make the effort to give information about the design concept of each space. The results of this study are limited in that it covers only three parks in Seoul, and did not consider seasonal variables. Nevertheless, this study may he significant in that it dealt with the cognition of design concepts for urban parks, focusing on the difference between designers and visitors.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
• /
• v.26 no.2
• /
• pp.67-84
• /
• 2023

Gender diversity policies aim to reduce institutional discrimination in a male-dominated society and the underutilization of women in terms of the economy. Extant gender diversity literature has focused on gender diversity policies premised on women being treated as a minority. However, since women-centered occupational groups do exist, women cannot be considered an absolute minority. Therefore, we explored the gender difference in job seekers' reactions to a diversity policy favorable to men. The experiment divided participants into 2 (Gender: Male, Female) × 2 (Diversity: Favorable, Unfavorable), canvassing 329 college students (156 male, 173 female). Participants evaluated the organizational justice and organizational attractiveness of the virtual company by looking at the diversity cues presented in the job posting seeking new employees. As a result, it was confirmed that if the diversity cues presented in the job posting were favorable (vs. unfavorable) to the individual, the organization's distribution justice and procedural justice perceptions were generated differently according to the gender of the job seeker. Moreover, female job seekers perceived distribution justice and procedural justice as higher than male job seekers when they encountered diversity cues that were favorable (vs. unfavorable) to them. In addition, the relationship between diversity cues and organizational attractiveness was mediated by the perception of organizational justice, and this mediating effect was moderated by gender. For women, on the one hand, the mediating effect through the perception of distributive justice and procedural justice was significant in the relationship between diversity cues and organizational attractiveness. On the other hand, the mediating effect alone through the perception of procedural justice was significant for men. Our findings suggest that identical diversity managements are distinguished by individuals' social status or affiliation and may even result in differentiated behaviors.

• Journal of Korean Home Economics Education Association
• /
• v.24 no.1
• /
• pp.21-36
• /
• 2012

The purpose of this study was to determine the direction of dietary education in school. A questionnaire that identified nutrition knowledge, dietary behavior, help degree to real-life of dietary education, and dietary education satisfaction were developed based on a review of the literature. The subjects consisted of 409 high school female students in Daegu and Gyeongbuk area. The total mean score of nutrition knowledge was 9.2/15.0. The score of nutrition knowledge was correlated with school type, grade, number of brothers and sisters, and school record(p<0.05). The dietary behavior was 3.30/5.00, showing difference from school type, father's occupation, and economic level(p<0.05). It was also found that the higher the score in nutrition knowledge, the higher the score in dietary behavior(p<0.001). The total mean score of the dietary education satisfaction and help degree to real-life of dietary education for high school female students were same as 3.39/5.00. The biggest reason of unsatisfaction on dietary education was lack of class time. The form of instruction they want to get was the class for experiment and practice. The score of the dietary education satisfaction was correlated with help degree to real-life of dietary education, nutrition knowledge, and dietary behavior(p<0.01). Therefore, more active dietary education should be give to high school female students to meet the intellectual need and successful dietary behavior. Also dietary education would be needed to relate with their home.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
• /
• v.10 no.3
• /
• pp.355-366
• /
• 2007

The human's emotion has been used as a key factor in the design area and a marketing technique in a company. Therefore, a company is very interesting in human' emotional factor for the marketing and the design development recently. There have been very few studies carried out on enhancing how to use the emotional design and the emotional marketing in the kitchenware industry. Besides, almost all of the research works, which attempted to encourage how to use emotional factor for the design and the marketing, was carried out in the theory research level rather than a practical research. This research has been conducted both a qualitative research and a quantitative research in the field. The research methods were as follows; first, this research studied what is the emotional design and the emotional marketing through the previous literature research works. second, the researchers set up the hypothesis and research aims through the previous empirical research works from the researchers who are doing this research. Third, as the main body of this research, this research was conducted through the analysis of companies' data, the data come from the interviews by managers, and the data from questionnaire by the users. The results was produced after analyses of the above all the data. As a results, this research has introduced the successful case study which used the emotional design concept and the emotional marketing as a strategic level in the kitchenware industry. This research results would be able to help some one who wants to use the emotional design as a strategic level in order to increase their market share.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
• /
• v.21 no.1
• /
• pp.59-70
• /
• 2018

With the breakthrough of speech recognition technology, conversational agents have become pervasive through smartphones and smart speakers. The recognition accuracy of speech recognition technology has developed to the level of human beings, but it still shows limitations on understanding the underlying meaning or intention of words, or understanding long conversation. Accordingly, the users experience various errors when interacting with the conversational agents, which may negatively affect the user experience. In addition, in the case of smart speakers with a voice as the main interface, the lack of feedback on system and transparency was reported as the main issue when the users using. Therefore, there is a strong need for research on how users can better understand the capability of the conversational agents and mitigate negative emotions in error situations. In this study, we applied social strategies, "forewarning" and "apology", to conversational agent and investigated how these strategies affect users' perceptions of the agent in breakdown situations. For the study, we created a series of demo videos of a user interacting with a conversational agent. After watching the demo videos, the participants were asked to evaluate how they liked and trusted the agent through an online survey. A total of 104 respondents were analyzed and found to be contrary to our expectation based on the literature study. The result showed that forewarning gave a negative impression to the user, especially the reliability of the agent. Also, apology in a breakdown situation did not affect the users' perceptions. In the following in-depth interviews, participants explained that they perceived the smart speaker as a machine rather than a human-like object, and for this reason, the social strategies did not work. These results show that the social strategies should be applied according to the perceptions that user has toward agents.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
• /
• v.20 no.2
• /
• pp.29-45
• /
• 2015

Systematic theory, concepts, and methodology for the biological evolution have been developed while patterns and principles of the evolution have been actively studied in the past 200 years. Furthermore, they are applied to various fields such as evolutionary economics, evolutionary psychology, evolutionary linguistics, making significant progress in research. In addition, existing studies have applied main biological evolutionary models to artifacts although such methods do not fit to them. These models are also limited to generalize evolutionary patterns of artifacts because they are designed in terms of a subjective point of view of experts who know well about the artifacts. Unlike biological organisms, because artifacts are likely to reflect the imagination of the human will, it is known that the theory of biological evolution cannot be directly applied to artifacts. In this paper, beyond the individual's subjective, the aim of our research is to present evolutionary patterns of a given artifact based on peeping the idea of the public. For this, we propose a text mining approach that presents a systematic framework that can find out the evolutionary patterns of a given artifact and then visualize effectively. In particular, based on our proposal, we focus mainly on a case study of mobile phone that has emerged as an icon of innovation in recent years. We collect and analyze review posts on mobile phone available in the domestic market over the past decade, and discuss the detailed results about evolutionary patterns of the mobile phone. Moreover, this kind of task is a tedious work over a long period of time because a small number of experts carry out an extensive literature survey and summarize a huge number of materials to finally draw a diagram of evolutionary patterns of the mobile phone. However, in this work, to minimize the human efforts, we present a semi-automatic mining algorithm, and through this research we can understand how human creativity and imagination are implemented. In addition, it is a big help to predict the future trend of mobile phone in business and industries.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
• /
• v.20 no.2
• /
• pp.219-230
• /
• 2010

Digital content makes big changes to our daily lives while bringing opportunities and challenges for companies. Creative firms integrate pictures, texts, videos, audios, and data by digitalization to develop new products or services and create digital experiences to promote their brands. Most articles on digital content contribute to the basic concept or development of marketing it in literature. Actually, compared with traditional value chains for common products or services, the digital content industry seems to have more potential value. Because quite a bit of digital content is free to the consumer, price is not necessarily perceived as an indicator of the quality or value of information (Rowley 2008). It becomes evident that a current theme in digital content is the issue of "value," and research on customers' perceived value of digital content is a necessity. This article argues that experiential value has an advantage in customers' evaluations of digital content. Two different but related contributions to the understanding of "value" of digital content are made here. First, based on the comparison of digital content with products and services, the article proposes two key characteristics that make experiential strategy available for digital content: intangibility and near-zero reproduction cost. On top of that, based on the discussion of the gap between company's idealized value and customer's perceived value, this article emphasizes that digital content prices and pricing of digital content is different from products and services. As a result of intangibility, prices may not reflect customer value. Moreover, the cost of digital content in the development stage may be very high while reproduction costs shrink dramatically. Moreover, because of the value gap mentioned before, the pricing polices vary for different digital contents. For example, flat price policy is generally used for movies and music (Magiera 2001; Netherby 2002), while for continuous demand, digital content such as online games and anti-virus programs involves a more complicated matter of utility and competitive price levels. Digital content companies have to explore various kinds of strategies to overcome this gap. Rethinking marketing solutions such as advertisements, images, and word-of-mouth and their effect on customers' perceived value becomes essential. China's digital content industry is becoming more and more globalized and drawing special attention from different countries and regions that have respective competitive advantages. The 2008-2009 Annual Report on the Development of China's Digital Content Industry (CCIDConsulting 2009) indicates that, with the driven power of domestic demand and governmental policy support, the country's digital content industry maintained a fast growth of some 30 percent in 2008, obviously indicating the initial stage of industry expansion. In China, anti-virus programs and other software programs which need to be updated use a quarter-based pricing policy. Customers can download a trial version for free and use it for six months or a year. If they want to use it longer, continuous payment is needed. They examine the excellence of the digital content during this trial period and decide whether to pay for continued usage. For China’s music and movie industries, as a result of initial development, experiential strategy has not been much applied, even though firms in other countries find the trial experience and explore important strategies(such as customers listening to music for several seconds for free before downloading it). For the above reasons, anti-virus program may be a representative for digital content industry in China and an exploratory study of the advantage of experiential value in customer's perceived value of digital content is done in the anti-virus market of China. In order to enhance the reliability of the survey data, this study focused on people who were experienced users of anti-virus programs. The empirical results revealed that experiential value has a positive effect on customers' perceived value of digital content. In other words, because digital content is intangible and the reproduction costs are nearly zero, customers' evaluations are based heavily on their experience. Moreover, image and word-of-mouth do not have a positive effect on perceived value, only on experiential value. That is to say, a digital content value chain is different from that of a general product or service. Experiential value has a notable advantage and mediates the effect of image and word-of-mouth on perceived value. The results of this study help provide an understanding of why free digital content downloads exist in developing countries. Customers can perceive the value of digital content only by using and experiencing it. This is also why such governments support the development of digital content. Other developing countries whose digital content business is also in the beginning stage can make use of the suggestions here. Moreover, based on the advantage of experiential strategy, companies should make more of an effort to invest in customers' experience. As a result of the characteristics and value gap of digital content, customers perceive more value in the intangible digital content only by experiencing what they really want. Moreover, because of the near-zero reproduction costs, companies can perhaps use experiential strategy to enhance customer understanding of digital content.