• Korean Journal of Oriental Medicine
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.33-41
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• 2010

Patterns are symbolic expressions of life style or sentiment of people as a product of culture. Furthermore, it is a type of language that the shape or implication does not change much over time. Patterns shown on the Korean medical containers are related to human life and health that they are not very diverse and splendid but closed used in real life. The medical containers include the alcohol container or tea-ware in broad sense, but under this study, it would be handled only for the Korean medical containers directly used to protect human health and treatment of diseases. They would be the Medicine Mortar and Pestle that is used to grind the herbal medical ingredients, pots that hold the liquid decoction, containers to keep the medical ingredients in general conceptual use for medical purposes. The patterns inscribed are classified in animal pattern, plant pattern or alphabet pattern. Turtle, crane, ginseng, and life patterns have the contemplation to pray for long life without disease or good fortune, while plum pattern, dragon pattern and the like are used in the medical containers used mainly in royal families with the social status and dignity shown. As such, patterns have not only ornament elements but also the symbolic implication to represent long life without illness for human. It provides the basic data of medical wisdom contained in the pattern and willingness of human to protect life from illness. On the basis of such research, it would require ensuing studies to make comparison and analysis with the medical containers with the patterns in the adjacent countries in the days to come.

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.80-100
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• 2014

As men have started to show more desire to express themselves through clothing and accessories also they learn by themselves and take diverse experiences about fashion. At the same time, men's fashion-consciousness is growing together. The role of male consumers' is becoming significant in the fashion market, and there has been more research on their clothes and fashion is increasing, however research on the male casual clothing for their 30~49 years old group is still insufficient. This study aims to examine the casual brands for men in their 30~40s and their characteristics among other men's brands recently appearing in Korea. The results of the study found: first, regarding the questionnaire to give men's casual brand names, 30s males' answers showed clearer recognition about the casual brand than those of 40s males. secondly, the factors affecting attitude of male consumers' towards casual brands are designed 'aesthetics', 'surroundings' and 'price', and the men in their 40s put more important than men in their 30s on 'aesthetics' and 'surroundings'. third, when men were actually buying casual brand, they then took five characteristic factors into account namely: 'the external environment', 'functionality' design 'aesthetics', 'symbolic' and 'price'. Men in their 30s did not show much difference in actual purchase characteristics in regards for the brand factors but men in their 40s showed interest when asked about 'buying product with noticeable brand logo or trademark' item among 'symbolic' factors than men in their 30s (p< .01 of significant difference).

• The International Journal of Costume Culture
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.246-261
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• 2000

The purpose of this study was to investigate the apparel purchasing behavior of adult women consumer groups divided by materialism. The specific objects of this study were ; 1) to examine the degree of materialism, impulsive buying, and conspicuous consumption. 2) to examine the correlation between impulsive buying, materialism, and conspicuous consumption, and to examine the relative influences of impulsive buying, materialism affecting conspicuous consumption. 3) to classify groups according to the level of the propensity for materialism, and to examine the clothing purchasing behavior of the divided groups. Data were administered to 357 adult women living in Sunchol from June to July 1999. For analysis of the data, factor analysis, one-way ANOVE, duncan's multiple range test, frequency and χ²-test were employed. The results of this study were summarized as follows. 1. Materialism and impulsive buying have shown higher than middle score, and conspicuous consumption has shown similar to middle score. 2. The correlation between materialism, impulsive buying, and conspicuous consumption has shown similar to middle score. The higher the materialism and experience of impulsive buying was, the higher was the conspicuous consumption. According to the results of regression analysis examining the relative influence of variables affecting conspicuous consumption. According to the results of regression analysis examining the relative influence of variables affecting conspicuous consumption, the relative importance of the variables were in the order of ; success-symbolic materialism, life-centered materialism, happiness-pursuing materialism, in the order of ; success-symbolic materialism, life-centered materialism, happiness-pursuing materialism, impulsive buying and their explanatory power totalled 35.2%. 3. Evaluating attributes of product, the type of purchasing store, the place of purchasing, the need of high class department store, purchasing price range, and accompanying people when purchasing were the factors influencing the apparel purchasing behavior.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.382-396
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• 2016

This study explores 1) the cultural meanings that television beauty programs deliver, 2) the ways consumers consume TV beauty programs, and 3) the differences in the meaning of television beauty programs according to personality types. An Enneagram was used to define different personality types. The Enneagram explained personalities according to underlying core energies and was useful to grasp consumer behavior. Exploratory data were collected through in-depth interviews of fifteen women in their twenties who watched television beauty programs regularly. The personality types were classified according to three core energies: head-centered, heart-centered, or body-centered. The results were: First, television beauty programs were celebrity-focused, product-focused, and consumer-focused. They were found to help consumers improve their appearance in an appearance-oriented contemporary society by sharing appearance management information. Second, consumers consumed the products from television beauty programs as well as sought a "beautifully transformed self". Third, cultural meanings moved first from a culturally-constituted world to consumer goods through television beauty programs that then moved these goods to the individual consumer through symbolic consumption behavior along with grooming rituals, evaluation practices, appreciation practices, and accounting practices. Symbolic consumption behavior differed with personality type: heartcentered consumers transferred meaning through grooming rituals and appreciation practices, head-centered consumers through evaluation practices, and body-centered consumers through accounting practices.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.390-398
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• 2009

The research purposes are (1) to identify male market segmentation based on fashion involvement, (2) to compare purchase intention of clothing items and store attribute evaluation at two different retail formats, department store and internet shopping mall, and (3) to compare the influence of store attributes on intention to purchase fashion products at two retail formats among segments. The data are collected from 275 male consumers through internet research institute. The major results of this study are as follows. First, the dimensions of fashion involvement are identified into external involvement and internal involvement. Male respondents present high mean scores on external involvement items, emphasizing social roles of clothing. Two involvement factors generate three market segments: high involvement group(32.4%), external involvement group(44%), and low involvement group(23.6%). Second, high involvement group shows higher mean scores on purchase intention of seven clothing items than low involvement group. Third, department store attributes are identified into four factors, product assortment, quality per price, service, and symbolic image, while internet shopping mall includes assortment & convenience, quality per price, and symbolic image. High involvement group again presents higher mean scores on each retail attribute factor than low involvement group. Finally, quality per price is the most significant variable to explain the purchase intention at department store among three market segment, whereas assortment & convenience and quality per price are important predictors to increase purchase intention at internet shopping mall. However, relative importance of each attribute variable is different among three involvement groups.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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• v.51 no.1
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• pp.119-128
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• 2001

This study gives information for the enterprise to map out a positive marketing strategy and facilitate a new product development by researching and analyzing the specific character of the high income woman-brackets. In order to do that, based upon the materials of the National Statistical office, I made a selection of the high income brackets, subdividing their scholastic ability into four serfs. The subject of the study was the women from twenties to sixties among customers of a high class dress shop in Taejeon. I made up 600 questionnaires for them. using 441 of these for the statistical analysis and making available the correlation analysis, the primary factor analysis, and $X^2$-test. This study is classified into the type of women customers purchasing clothes who are the high-income brackets. Intended to study a special quality of purchasing according to income. 1. The purchasing manner of the high-income brackets customers is exposed the luxurious vain purchasing manner, the rational reasonable manner, and idiosyncrasy individual manner in order 1) The consumer of the high-income brackets in general prefer to a high class clothes. In the contrast, low-income brackets prefer to rational reasonable consumption in spending money on clothes. 2) The favorite consumption manner of the high income brackets is the luxurious vain purchasing manner. This consumption values the more symbolic means the things show than owing the goods. 2. The higher standard of education and younger tends to be high in the luxurious, vain purchasing. 3. The unreasonable purchasing show an high irrelation at the impulse buying arid self-satisfaction. 4. Self-satisfaction shows the highest interrelation than any other variations in the concern of clothes. 5. The symbolic images which exerts an influence upon purchasing manner are the notable elements of constituting as growing older. 6. The high standard of education prefers to the rational resonable purchasing, but on the other hand shows a high rate at the unreasonable individual purchasing manner.

• Journal of the Korea Furniture Society
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.364-371
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• 2012

I designed a dietary life kitchen utensils which is focused by the shape of split bamboo that has meaning of health and safety and the shaman who is the religion and incantation performer, and who solve problems, which are impossible to solve in common methods, by borrowing the power and granting the meaning which is connected with transcendent existence and principal. Having closest relation with human being's diet culture is being changed with adding beauty instead of the part of simple practical aspect in our normal life. I tried to show incantation effect with keeping the characteristic of kitchen utensils by granting the symbolic meaning of shamanism which is the shelter that is projected the desire of human beings. the materials were produced of an ebony and steel and varnished with lacquer for coloring. For hand shape, which is hard to treat in irregular forms, the religious image of shamanism was formed by casting which expresses the touch of an ebony and the cold characteristic of metal. an overall design doesn't detail excessively distort or largely transform the form of dietary utensils, keeps its individuality, and emphasizes the image by figuring a grip part which a human can see and a body can approach. in addition, I try to show a point that shamanism has affected human life for long time and symbolic meaning of bamboo-shape shows health and safety. And these things vest with each dietary life tools and should be the role of enzyme about the effect of human life.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.29-52
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• 2012

Consumers differ in the way they make a purchase. An audio mania would willingly make a bold, yet serious, decision to buy a top-of-the-line home theater system, while he is not interested in replacing his two-decade-old shabby car. On the contrary, an automobile enthusiast wouldn't mind spending forty thousand dollars to buy a new Jaguar convertible, yet cares little about his junky component system. It is product involvement that helps us explain such differences among individuals in the purchase style. Product involvement refers to the extent to which a product is perceived to be important to a consumer (Zaichkowsky, 2001). Product involvement is an important factor that strongly influences consumer's purchase decision-making process, and thus has been of prime interest to consumer behavior researchers. Furthermore, researchers found that involvement is closely related to perceived risk (Dholakia, 2001). While abundant research exists addressing how product involvement relates to overall perceived risk, little attention has been paid to the relationship between involvement and different types of perceived risk in an electronic commerce setting. Given that perceived risk can be a substantial barrier to the online purchase (Jarvenpaa, 2000), research addressing such an issue will offer useful implications on what specific types of perceived risk an online firm should focus on mitigating if it is to increase sales to a fullest potential. Meanwhile, past research has focused on such consumer responses as information search and dissemination as a consequence of involvement, neglecting other behavioral responses like online merchant selection. For one example, will a consumer seriously considering the purchase of a pricey Guzzi bag perceive a great degree of risk associated with online buying and therefore choose to buy it from a digital storefront rather than from an online marketplace to mitigate risk? Will a consumer require greater trust on the part of the online merchant when the perceived risk of online buying is rather high? We intend to find answers to these research questions through an empirical study. This paper explores the impact of enduring product involvement and perceived risks on required trust level, and further on online merchant choice. For the purpose of the research, five types or components of perceived risk are taken into consideration, including financial, performance, delivery, psychological, and social risks. A research model has been built around the constructs under consideration, and 12 hypotheses have been developed based on the research model to examine the relationships between enduring involvement and five components of perceived risk, between five components of perceived risk and required trust level, between enduring involvement and required trust level, and finally between required trust level and preference toward an e-tailer. To attain our research objectives, we conducted an empirical analysis consisting of two phases of data collection: a pilot test and main survey. The pilot test was conducted using 25 college students to ensure that the questionnaire items are clear and straightforward. Then the main survey was conducted using 295 college students at a major university for nine days between December 13, 2010 and December 21, 2010. The measures employed to test the model included eight constructs: (1) enduring involvement, (2) financial risk, (3) performance risk, (4) delivery risk, (5) psychological risk, (6) social risk, (7) required trust level, (8) preference toward an e-tailer. The statistical package, SPSS 17.0, was used to test the internal consistency among the items within the individual measures. Based on the Cronbach's ${\alpha}$ coefficients of the individual measure, the reliability of all the variables is supported. Meanwhile, the Amos 18.0 package was employed to perform a confirmatory factor analysis designed to assess the unidimensionality of the measures. The goodness of fit for the measurement model was satisfied. Unidimensionality was tested using convergent, discriminant, and nomological validity. The statistical evidences proved that the three types of validity were all satisfied. Now the structured equation modeling technique was used to analyze the individual paths along the relationships among the research constructs. The results indicated that enduring involvement has significant positive relationships with all the five components of perceived risk, while only performance risk is significantly related to trust level required by consumers for purchase. It can be inferred from the findings that product performance problems are mostly likely to occur when a merchant behaves in an opportunistic manner. Positive relationships were also found between involvement and required trust level and between required trust level and online merchant choice. Enduring involvement is concerned with the pleasure a consumer derives from a product class and/or with the desire for knowledge for the product class, and thus is likely to motivate the consumer to look for ways of mitigating perceived risk by requiring a higher level of trust on the part of the online merchant. Likewise, a consumer requiring a high level of trust on the merchant will choose a digital storefront rather than an e-marketplace, since a digital storefront is believed to be trustworthier than an e-marketplace, as it fulfills orders by itself rather than acting as an intermediary. The findings of the present research provide both academic and practical implications. The first academic implication is that enduring product involvement is a strong motivator of consumer responses, especially the selection of a merchant, in the context of electronic shopping. Secondly, academicians are advised to pay attention to the finding that an individual component or type of perceived risk can be used as an important research construct, since it would allow one to pinpoint the specific types of risk that are influenced by antecedents or that influence consequents. Meanwhile, our research provides implications useful for online merchants (both online storefronts and e-marketplaces). Merchants may develop strategies to attract consumers by managing perceived performance risk involved in purchase decisions, since it was found to have significant positive relationship with the level of trust required by a consumer on the part of the merchant. One way to manage performance risk would be to thoroughly examine the product before shipping to ensure that it has no deficiencies or flaws. Secondly, digital storefronts are advised to focus on symbolic goods (e.g., cars, cell phones, fashion outfits, and handbags) in which consumers are relatively more involved than others, whereas e- marketplaces should put their emphasis on non-symbolic goods (e.g., drinks, books, MP3 players, and bike accessories).

• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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• v.63 no.4
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• pp.30-43
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• 2013

This study provides suggestions of cultural product design contents by using the cloud-shaped gong in traditional temple culture in order to find a high value-added approach. The research herein is part of cultural design contents projects embedded with the spiritual value and symbolic connotation of temple culture. This would be meaningful to enhance its degree of utilization. This can also be a way to find a strategic alternative to a high value addition of temple stay and dissemination of temple culture. For the research methodology, literature was reviewed over temple stay and Bulgeonsamul. For motive design and development of cultural product design, both Adobe Illustrator CS3 and Adobe Photoshop CS3 were used as computer design program. The template image of cloud-shaped gong for basic motive design was selected from those available at the domestic temples for accurate depiction of its head and body. Finally, samples were adopted from those temples of Gounsa, Songgwangsa, Guinsa, Hwaeomsa, and Naesosa. For each motive, different colors were applied and ten basic motives were practiced in total. By repeating the process for these motives, three types of textile design were prepared. T-shirt designs used a round neckline as basic form, and it was designed for sleeved and sleeveless styles. Apron designs stressed V-neckline and two types were processed: one for the back seam line and the other for side seam line. Pendants were designed with modern and luxurious image so that so that it could be used in various types of accessories. Designs for the bedding applied pattern design of the motives and this was done in a way that gave the images a sense of stability and splendor.

• Culinary science and hospitality research
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.302-318
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• 2016

The purpose of this study was to verify the effects of benefit sought of food products on SNS-WOM information characteristics, purchase intention, and SNS-WOM with regards to food products. In addition, the mediating role of SNS-WOM information characteristics was also examined. A survey was conducted from March 10th to 30th using an SNS based convenience sampling method. A total of 350 responses were collected, of which 326 were used for analysis, after excluding responses containing missing data. Multiple regression and hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to verify the hypotheses. The results from this study are as follows. First, it was found that diversity and utilitarian benefits of food products had a greater effect on consensus of SNS than the symbolic and experimental benefits. However, symbolic and experimental benefits of food products had a greater effect on neutrality of SNS than the diversity and utilitarian benefits. Second, only consensus of SNS-WOM information characteristics significantly impacted purchase intention of food products. Third, consensus of SNS-WOM information characteristics had a greater effect on SNS-WOM intention of food products than the neutrality of SNS-WOM information characteristics. Fourth, SNS-WOM information characteristics were found to mediate the relationship between benefit sought and purchase intention of food products. Fifth, SNS-WOM information characteristics were found to mediate the relationship between benefit sought and SNS-WOM intention of food products.