• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.29-42
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• 2011

With the many advantages of the internet, online shopping has become one of the fastest growing types of retail businesses. However, internet-based firms are much more firmly required to retain existing customers rather than secure new ones, and to make them revisit the site by strengthening trust and loyalty, thereby improving profits and outrivaling competitors. Commitment is an essential part of successful long-term relationships between buyers and sellers. Although commitments by both parties in an exchange can provide the foundation for the development of relational social norms, disproportionate commitments can lead to opportunism by the less committed partner. Moreover, flow, which is characterized by intense concentration and enjoyment, was found to be significantly linked with exploratory use behavior, which in turn was linked to the extent of computer use. The level of flow was, itself, determined by the individual's sense of being in control, and the level of challenge perceived in maneuvering a website. Website attractiveness goes hand in hand with the attractiveness of an internet shopping mall, and it can be conceptualized as the persuasive effectiveness of a message by the use of familiarity, favor, similarity, etc. It occurs when information receivers try to achieve self-satisfaction when they actually or emotionally identify themselves with an information source. This study investigates the relationship between the perceived system characteristics of an internet shopping mall and the loyalty of online consumers, and it examines how perceived website attractiveness and flow play mediating roles between the perceived system characteristics of an internet shopping mall and the affective commitment in the context of a clothes internet shopping mall. For these purposes, a structural model comprising several variables was developed. That model was tested with an analysis of moment structure (AMOS) using data from respondents who had purchased clothing through the internet during the past three months. In this model, the perceived system characteristics of an internet shopping mall, such as familiarity, reputation, uniqueness, positive emotions, self-efficacy, and interactivity, were proposed to affect the website's attractiveness and flow, and lead to a higher affective commitment over time. Thus, the perceived website attractiveness and flow were proposed as core mediating variables between perceived system characteristics and affective commitment. The results of a reliability test using Cronbach's Alpha, and a confirmatory factor analysis warranted using unidimensionality for the measures for each construct. In addition, the nomological validity of the measures was warranted from the results of a correlation analysis. The results of empirical analyses indicated that systematic attributes resulting in website attractiveness and user's characteristics, thereby triggering customers' flow, play a crucial role in inducing customers' affective commitment, and a user's characteristics are twice as important as systematic attributes in this study. Moreover, familiarity, reputation, and uniqueness all have a significant effect on website attractiveness, and the research showed that uniqueness took the first place, and that familiarity and reputation followed in order of magnitude. The fact that reputation was not the most important factor that affects the attractiveness of an internet shopping mall, with uniqueness or familiarity having a greater impact, suggests much deeper implications. Finally, positive emotion, self-efficacy, and interactivity all have a significant effect on customers' flow. In particular, the fact that positive emotion, compared to self-efficacy or interactivity, has much more impact on flow is very suggestive.

• Korean Management Science Review
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.135-156
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• 2012

Due to the rapid growth of social networking community (SNC), research into SNC user's behavior has recently emerged as an important issue in information systems. An individual makes a decision whether or not to continually use his or her own SNC and to purchase digital items to decorate it. Most previous research has focused on a user's continuance intention and has ignored the importance of purchase intention. This study develops and empirically tests an integrated model designed to predict a user's two types of behavioral intention：continuance intention and purchase intention based on the expectation-confirmation model (ECM) and a dual model of relationship maintenance mechanism.The results indicate that perceived usefulness, satisfaction, personalization, and switching cost have important influences on the formation of SNC continuance intention. The results also show that perceived usefulness and satisfaction does not have any significant impacts on purchase intention, while personalization, learning, attractiveness of alternatives, and continuance intention significantly affect it.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.11
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• pp.179-190
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• 2021

The purpose of this study is to understand the impact of influencers on generation Z (Gen Z) in the online environment. This article has applied the theories of source credibility, TAM, IAM, and TPB to identify influencer characteristics that affect the purchasing behaviors of Gen Z customers. This research was conducted using a Google Form survey with 24 pre-designed questions. A total of 464 valid questionnaires from Gen Z Vietnamese were collected between November 2020 and January 2021. Data was analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) with SmartPLS 3 software. The analysis results confirmed that the components of influencer credibility have a positive impact on Gen Z's purchasing behaviors under the mediated influence of argument quality, perceived usefulness, and social influence. Surprisingly, for Gen Z, the influencers' attractiveness has the strongest impact on their online behavior. More specifically, attractiveness plays the most important role in the perceived usefulness and social influence of Gen Z customers, while influencers' expertise has the strongest impact on argument quality delivered to customers. This study provides evidence of a change in the way Gen Z responds to marketing activities. They are more drawn by the attraction of influencers than their expertise.

• Archives of Plastic Surgery
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.248-254
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• 2019

Background No head to head comparison is available between surgical lip lifting and upper lip filler injections to decide which technique yields the best results in patients. Despite the growing popularity of upper lip augmentation, its effect on societal perceptions of attractiveness, successfulness and overall health in woman is unknown. Methods Blinded casual observers viewed three versions of independent images of 15 unique patient lower faces for a total of 45 images. Observers rated the attractiveness, perceived success, and perceived overall health for each patient image. Facial perception questions were answered on a visual analog scale from 0 to 100, where higher scores corresponded to more positive responses. Results Two hundred and seventeen random observers with an average age of 47 years (standard deviation, 15.9) rated the images. The majority of observers were females (n=183, 84%) of white race (n=174, 80%) and had at least some college education (n=202, 93%). The marginal mean score for perceived attractiveness from the natural condition was 1.5 points (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.9-2.18) higher than perceived attractiveness from the simulated upper lip filler injection condition, and 2.6 points higher (95% CI, 1.95-3.24) than the simulated upper lip lift condition. There was a moderate to strong correlation between the scores of the same observer. Conclusions Simulated upper lip augmentation is amenable to social perception analysis. Scores of the same observer for attractiveness, successfulness, and overall health are strongly correlated. Overall, the natural condition had the highest scores in all categories, followed by simulated upper lip filler, and lastly simulated upper lip lift.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.182-198
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• 2022

Bullying at school results in a variety of psychological and social issues. Even after victims reach adulthood, these issues do not resolve and can have detrimental effects. The purpose of this study is to explore the effect of school bullying victimization on body appreciation in adulthood. Considerations include multi-mediating effects of physical attractiveness comparison and ambivalent emotions toward beauty. A research model comprised of six hypotheses was derived applying the A (adversity)-B (belief)-C (consequence) theory. A survey with 583 South Korean women in their twenties to forties was conducted to collect data. Confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modeling, and multi-mediation analysis were applied, and all hypotheses were accepted. School bullying victimization had a negative influence on body appreciation in adulthood. Additionally, physical attractiveness comparison and ambivalent emotions toward beauty mediated this causal relationship. Also, the mediating effect of physical attractiveness comparison on the relationship between school bullying victimization and body appreciation was the greatest among the three mediating effects. This study demonstrated that bullying victimization at school continues into adulthood, which hurts body appreciation of adulthood. The findings would contribute to the development of therapy programs for school bullying victims.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.203-222
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• 2016

Previous research has demonstrated that imagined contact is useful to reducing prejudice against minorities (e.g. Turner & Crisp, 2010). In this research, we investigated whether imagined contact increases attraction to physically unattractive women, and whether this effect is moderated by perceiver's physical attractiveness and appearance orientation in romantic relationships. Single male participants (n = 98) responded to items assessing their physical attractiveness and appearance orientation, and then were randomly assigned to one of the two conditions. In the imagined contact condition, participants were told to imagine communicating with a physically unattractive woman and come up with some interesting things about her. In the control condition, participants were told to simply imagine a physically unattractive woman. Next, participants saw a picture of a physically unattractive woman and rated her likeability, perceived attractiveness, and willingness to ask her out, which were averaged to form the composite measure of attraction. We found a significant main effect of imagined contact, as expected. This main effect was moderated by appearance orientation, but not by perceivers' physical attractiveness. The effect of imagined contact was significant among those low in appearance orientation, but not among those high in appearance orientation.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.141-152
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• 2022

Purpose - This study attempts to explore the factors that affect the consumer's response to the influencer's "backdoor advertisement" which has been a social media controversy recently. Accordingly, this study focuses on the importance of the information source's characteristics in influencer marketing, and demonstrates the impact of influencer credibility, attractiveness, and expertise on consumer responses after the influencer's sponsorship controversy. Design/methodology/approach - To this end, a study was conducted on adults who subscribed to one or more channels of influencers, and a virtual newspaper article was used in the survey. 196 sample data were collected and SPSS PROCESS Macro was used for data analysis. Findings - As a result, there was a negative impact on the credibility of the influencer which carried over to a negative reception of their shared content, while the attractiveness of the influencer had a positive impact on the reception of their shared content, even after the controversy over the influencer's backdoor advertisement. Research implications or Originality - This study contributes to the expansion of research on influencer marketing. Also, it provides insight into understanding and interpreting the phenomenon of influencers' backdoor advertisements and consumer reactions.

• Proceedings of the Korean Association for Survey Research Conference
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• 2005.12a
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• pp.221-245
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• 2005

This research introduced the concept of 'alternative attractiveness' derived from the social exchange theory to the research model predicting turnover intention among salesforce. By doing so, we tried to broaden the understandings of relationship between salesperson job attitude and salesperson behavior. We collected and analysed the data from the survey on the 178 salespeople employed at the life insurance companies. We found the alternative attractiveness to be a significant antecedent of the turnover intention. Specifically, the more attractive the alternative the greater the intention of turnover. However, we also found that the salesforces are less attracted to the alternative if they are more satisfied with their jobs. Finally, this research can be a seminary work with the relational perspective for the studies of salesforce management.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.221-231
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• 2014

TIn this paper, The need for a long-term sustainable Green IT strategy to pursue strategic partnerships and alliance was proposed. We made a research model to identify how social pressure, environmental orientation and environmental attractiveness affect into the Green IT strategy, and how Green IT strategy affects on Green IT company's environmental performance. In previous studies, the long-term persistence was used as the dependent variables, but in this paper it was used as a parameter variable. A survey of Green IT companies and a empirical analysis by statistical software package were conducted. It was verified that the mediating effect is between the social pressure, environmental orientation, environmental attractiveness and environmental performance by the long-term persistence.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.269-278
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• 2022

Recently, the travel and lodging industries have been suffering from the spread of COVID-19. But Airbnb recovered its profits with a differentiated strategy. This study identified the characteristics of Airbnb and examined their effects on customer's revisit intention in the Airbnb context. Perceived value, trust about Airbnb, and social norms were considered as the key factors of revisit intention. In addition, the effects of relative attractiveness, brand identification, and enjoyment on perceived value and trust about Airbnb were examined. The proposed research model was tested based on 285 consumers who had Airbnb experience more than twice. The analysis results showed that relative attractiveness, brand identification, and enjoyment had a significant influence on perceived value and trust. Perceived value had a significant influence on revisit intention. However, trust about Airbnb and social norms did not significantly affect revisit intention. Moreover, ths analysis results found no significant moderating effect of share of wallet. Based on the results of this study, Airbnb would establish effective marketing and operation strategies by understanding the formation mechanism of consumer's revisit intention toward Airbnb.