Retail therapy occurs when consumers shop to improve negative feelings rather than merely acquire a needed product (Kang & Johnson, 2011). Retailers in all channels enable consumers to have positive emotional responses by providing them with positive experiences. Pine and Gilmore (1999) identified four types of experiences sought by consumers: entertainment, education, escapism, and esthetics (i.e., 4Es). It is not known which, if any, of the 4Es motivate offline and online retail therapy shopping trips. Retail therapy shoppers may seek different benefits in open, online stores (where they have a great deal of freedom) versus closed, brick-and-mortar stores (where they are limited by time and space) (Bhate & Hannam, 2014). When retail therapy shoppers have experiences they desire, they should experience positive emotional reactions (i.e., pleasure, arousal) (Donovan & Rossiter, 1982). Furthermore, consumers who experience positive emotional reactions tend to display impulse buying behavior (Chang, Eckman, & Yan, 2011). Engaging in impulse buying while retail therapy shopping may encourage compulsive buying behavior (Kang & Johnson, 2011), the most severe form of which is shopping addiction (Edwards, 1993). Based on this collection of previous research, the following hypotheses were developed: H1: Among retail therapy shoppers, the amount of a) entertainment b) education, c) escapism, and d) esthetics sought will be significantly different between 1) offline stores and 2) online stores. H2: Retail therapy behavior will be positively related to level of a) pleasure and b) arousal experienced while shopping. H3a: Level of pleasure experienced while shopping will be positively related to impulse buying behavior. H3b. Level of arousal experienced while shopping will be positively related to impulse buying behavior. H4: Among retail therapy shoppers, impulse buying behavior will be positively related to shopping addiction behavior.Method Using Amazon’s MTurk, 409 consumers (62.6% female; 72.0% Caucasian; 36.5% 30-39 years old) were recruited for an online survey. Participants were first asked to indicate if they had experience shopping for clothing to improve their mood. Clothing was selected as the focus of the study because it is a gender-neutral product frequently purchased during retail therapy (Atalay & Meloy, 2011). Only participants who had engaged in retail therapy behavior were asked to complete the rest of the questionnaire. The next five sections of the questionnaire contained multi-item, 7-point, Likert-type scales previously used to assess the variables in the study. Demographic information was also collected. Results To test H1, a series of t-tests was conducted to compare the benefits sought by retail therapy shoppers in open and closed settings. The means for each of the 4 Es were significantly greater for the closed setting of the store than the open setting of the website. Therefore, H1 was supported. Two regression models were created to test H2a and b. The coefficients for retail therapy were positively and significantly related to pleasure (β = .87; t = 35.70; p < 0.000) and arousal (β = .85; t = 32.52; p < 0.00). Thus, H2a and b were both supported. To examine H3a and b, another regression model was created. The coefficients for pleasure (β = .25; t = 4.51; p < 0.00) and arousal (β = .64; t = 11.69; p < 0.00) were positive and significant. Thus, H3a and H3b were both supported. Lastly, to test H4, a final regression model was created. The coefficient for impulse buying behavior (β = .93; t = 51.49; p < 0.00) was positive and significant, supporting H4. Discussion The results of the present study shed light on retail therapy shopping behavior. Consumers do seek the 4Es when therapeutically shopping for clothing, and they seek the 4Es to a greater degree in closed, offline environments. Perhaps the need to delay gratification in offline stores raises expectations of experiences that can be received immediately in online stores. Participants experienced pleasure and arousal when engaging in retail therapy behavior, thereby supporting researchers (Kang & Johnson, 2011) who conceptualized retail therapy behavior as mood-alleviative consumption behavior. The positive emotions experienced while clothing shopping were related to retail therapy shoppers’ impulse buying behavior, which was positively related to shopping addiction. The success experienced by individuals who engage in shopping behavior to improve their mood seems to encourage future shopping trips to enhance positive emotions. Thus, a troubling pattern of overconsumption may develop if retail therapy shoppers do not find additional methods for mood-alleviation.

With traditional boundaries among culture, technology, finance, politics, and ecology are disappearing (Friedman, 1999), the need of businesses to deliver unusual experiences to the consumers have increased in order to survive and thrive. With consumer’s need diversifying and getting more complex, capturing receiver’s attention is becoming the key issue for brands (Jung & Shin, 2010). Resultantly, the traditional operators are feeling the necessity to co-operate with those in other fields to obtain differentiation. Hence, even without one consensus meaning existing, the emphasis on the word 'convergence' is consistently growing. Its popularity of use reflects the era we live in, where boundaries are fading and unaccustomed ideas are brought together (Lord & Velez, 2013). However, despite its importance increasing, researches on convergence marketing are very limited. Most of the studies focus only on qualitative research, especially on case studies or defining conceptual definition of term convergence. Thus, not much is known of how consumers perceive this new way of approach. Therefore, the main goal of this study is to first, understand how the consumers perceive marketing of technology and marketing of culture, and second, how the convergence of these two influence on brand perception. The concept of convergence holds meaning in all sorts of fields from telecommunications, computer sciences, mathematics, logic, to economics, sociology, accounting and others (Lord & Velez, 2013). Although it seems that the word convergence is more or only related to the information technology discourse, however in large, although it is true that it was mainly based on the advance of information technology, the concept of convergence is frequently used both in the media industry and the other academic fields. From media industry, it denotes the ongoing restructuring of media companies as well as to describe the various intersections between media technologies, industries, content and audiences. Yet, in academic fields, in the same context of convergence several other terms are frequently used in the literatures, for example as alliance, partnership, sponsorship, and collaboration (Appelgren, 2004) which is all based on the same ‘coming together’ yet differs in specific goal. The convergence marketing that emerged from the intensified competition among brands co-operates with those in other fields in order to create differentiating point. The convergence in fashion industry is found with two main streams of technology convergence and cultural convergence (Wi, 2013). In line with the fact that convergence in everyday life bases from the improvement of technology, the application of technology in fashion industry is also found throughout the production process, from design to production and distribution. Unlike 2000s where fast fashion changed the fashion system, the impact of technology seems to be the largest in the turn of 2010 (Choo et al., 2012; Ko, Kim, & Lee, 2009). As the convergence of marketing and IT can create rich, technologically enabled digital experiences that engage, delight, and serve the consumer, now it plays a part as a source of innovation (Lord & Velez, 2013). Accordingly, with pioneering advantages that technology appliance can deliver, many luxury brands have adopted new technology in its marketing strategies, including QR code in the magazine ad, hologram technique replacing the plastic mannequin, motion reacting interactive show window are to name a few. Similarly, culture for marketing is found with consumers pursuing more and more cultural and intellectual activities with the improvement of the standard of living. As concept of art exemplified from the marketing standpoint evoke general connotations of sophistication, culture, luxury and prestige (Martorella, 1996), many luxury brands are applying cultural contents to improve brand images (Hagtvedt & Patrick, 2008). In sum, to satisfy consumers’ diverse need, brands are trying to incorporate not only using the novel digital devices, but also conveying the cultural contents to provide emotional stimulus. Thus, this study focuses on the marketing communication using convergence of technology and culture that aims to gain consumers’ evaluation. This study applies complex model of Technology acceptance model to Pleasure-arousal-dominance theory to better understand how consumers perceived and adopt the new type of marketing strategy. TAM is a widely employed in various studies to predict users’ behavior intentions (Hsu & Lu, 2004). Technology acceptance model suggested by Davis (1989) is agreed as the theoretical background useful to explain individual adoption behavior with the introduction of such relatively new medium like this make users to experience new ways (Bagozzi & Yi, 1988). Yet, in the model application stage, it was suggested that TAM model focuses only on the judgment of the system of technology and lacks the ability to explain other potentially important factors that can influence on users’ acceptance process. Thus, similar to the other previous researches, this study also linked the emotion response to the existing technology acceptance model (Igbaria, Zinatelli, Cragg, & Cavaye, 1997; Venkatesh, 2000). This was due to the fact that the usage of technology is extending throughout the industry, and emotional factors are found to work as an important factor in such work. Many other approaches have been made in order to explain the emotional side of the adoption, yet in this study, pleasure-arousal-dominance theory which is often used to explain in marketing communication discourse and is supported in application for experiential aspect (Holbrook & Batra, 1987). Pleasure-arousal-dominance theory (PAD; Mehrabian & Russell (1974)) suggested by Mehrabian & Russell (1974) explains the three basic emotion status to mediate approach-avoidance behaviors in any environment based on the Stimulus-Organism-Response(S-O-R) paradigm. It explains that individual’s emotional status is aroused by the mediating environment (Donovan, Rossiter, Marcoolyn, & Nesdale, 1994). Yet, interpreting the recent studies arguing that in consumption related emotions situation, dominance is not necessary (Donovan et al., 1994), this study was adopted as a two-dimensional construct that can impact the user’s behavior intention. In sum, this study applies perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, pleasure, and arousal as the determinants of adoption. In addition, not simply examining the adoption process of the convergence marketing, but this study relates to the actual effect on consumers’ brand evaluation. The appliance of TAM as the part of individual dimension variable was found in recent studies that investigated the effect of adverting with interactive medium (Han & Park, 2010; Shim, 2009). Previous literatures have suggested the perceived usefulness significantly influences on the attitude toward the retailer that provides such experience (Lee et al, 2006). Especially, such studies were made within the e-commerce conditions, such as investigation of consumer behavior towards a non-profit organization’s virtual store (Chen et al, 2002), influence of perceived usefulness positively influencing on attitude towards the online retailer and intentions to use from such retailer (Vijayasarathy, 2004), and determinants of adoption (usefulness, ease of use, and enjoyment) on the attitude toward the online retailer (Lee et al, 2006). On this account, brand attitude, and purchase intention was examined. In this study, survey method in order to investigate how consumers perceive the convergence marketing in the marketing communication context, and further, how they evaluated the brand performing convergence marketing. Preliminary study was first proceed to understand how marketing of technology and marketing of culture is recognized by consumers, and further, manipulate each stimuli. The adoption process was investigated using technology acceptance model combined with pleasure-arousal-dominance theory, as a part of the individual variables. With mediating effect of consumer characteristics found to be important in convergence marketing (Kim, 2007), personal innovativeness, art involvement, and need for uniqueness was applied to see the mediating effect. Therefore, a survey was conducted to see the differences in the degree of convergence. The preliminary research with 183 samples indicated that convergence marketing method was preferred over the dedicated marketing of technology or culture. Thus, the experimental design that was designed in a form of 2 by 2 between subjects factorial design with factors of innovation of technology and classiness of culture, the 513 samples collected a total of 485 samples being used. The analysis indicated that as the convergence traits of novelty and classic increase, determinant of intentions were strongly generated, followed by the increasing intention to accept, continued to building positive brand attitude and purchase intention. Yet, in specific, novelty trait had direct influences on making emotional feeling, including pleasure and arousal, rather than on generating cognitive reaction. It was the classic trait that had relationship in between cognitive and emotional reaction. Additionally, it was also found that in case of emotional feeling were evoked, pleasure and arousal, it influenced on building positive brand attitude continued to purchase intention even if adoption intention was not made. Moreover, when adoption intention was made, the direct influence on positive brand attitude was found to be significant. Meanwhile, determinants of adoption were found to have the significant influence on adoption intention and on brand attitude. The positive influence of determinants of adoption on adoption intention is in line with a number of researches on ETAM. When perceived to be higher, all resulted in higher adoption intention (Tzou et al., 2009). In terms of brand attitude, it was found that only the emotional variables of pleasure and arousal that had direct influence to have marketing effectance, which coincides with the result of Childers et al. (2001). This study indicates that compared to the perceived usefulness and ease of use, enjoyment was a stronger driver to predict the attitude. In sum, the result implies that convergence marketing can work to satisfy both the cognition dimension as well as the emotional facet. When drivers of determinants of adoption is generated, it strongly influence on the adoption intention. Yet, in order to have the marketing communication effect on brand attitude and purchase intention, it is necessary to consider the emotional aspect, either pleasure or arousal. Such relationship is not only related to the cultural contents, but technology itself can now deliver emotional feelings to the consumers. Thus, the marketing director should focus on the usage of technology to involve emotional facets. In addition, all individual characteristics were found to be significantly moderating. Result of the effect of personal innovativeness implies that those of highly innovated tends to not only have strongly influence on adoption intention, but also had significant effect of advertising effect compared to the less innovated groups. The moderating effects of art involvement turned out that those highly involved in art, novelty did not matter much compared to the less involved group. In case of need for uniqueness, the significant relationship of perceived pleasure on brand attitude was found, yet unlike expected, those low in need for uniqueness had significantly stronger adoption intention. Thus, this can be perceived as due to the marketing activity targeting the mass audience, lacking the attractiveness towards those in higher need for uniqueness. Thus, in order to attract both those in high and low need of uniqueness, delivering both usefulness as well as pleasure is important. The result of this study contributes to understanding on status and recent trend of convergence marketing activities. Further, it is meaningful in that it is in line with the recent studies of applying TAM in combination with PAD theory as well as within the context of marketing communication. Thus, the result of this study is expected to be helpful in understanding the new hybrid consumers and give suggests useful information for establishing future brand communication plans. Yet, to further understand the interpretation process of consumer studies that incorporate variables suggested from the interview should be incorporated in the study.

The world has changed dramatically, and the concern with regard to environmental and social impacts of economic activity have become hot issues that have been extensively discussed. Many marketers are applying sustainability as the part of their CSR and consumers are becoming more involved in ethical value of sustainable issues. However, yet, most people still perceive sustainable products as “alternatives” due to various reasons like price, design or simply unfamiliarity with the brand (Niinimaki, 2010). In a current situation where more and more brands are coming to the market offering the variety of choice of sustainable product, brand popularity can be a signal, or cue that help consumers to decide those of unfamiliar sustainable brand because brand popularity can influence the evaluation and decision in the sense that consumers perceive popular brand not only as trustworthy, but also superior to others (Dean, 1999).In terms of brand popularity, “popular” brands tend to acquire more favorable evaluations and larger user shares with, rather than without the popularity component. However, with such characteristics, brand popularity concept can be used within a cue utilization theory, which suggests that products consist of an array of cues (extrinsic and intrinsic) that serves as indicators of quality for consumers when they make decisions related to the product (Olsen, 1972), delivering brand popularity by extrinsic cue through advertising. In addition, the signaling theory suggests that when brand is ranked as popular, consumers assume there are trust and confidence behind the brand, which reduce their level of uncertainty (Dean, 1999). As such, while it has been argued that this cue could be useful as it provides a certain value to consumers and influence their opinion about the brand and, consequently, purchase decision, up to now, there are little studies that use the brand popularity concept as extrinsic cue.Along with the issue of brand popularity, although different consumers around the world make their decisions based on their own mental or physiological orientation, and the difference among consumer behavior has been widely studied and reported, yet, most of sustainable marketing campaigns are made in the similar fashion, without adapting them to specific traits of consumers in different countries. However, in order for sustainable The world has changed dramatically, and the concern with regard to environmental and social impacts of economic activity have become hot issues that have been extensively discussed. Many marketers are applying sustainability as the part of their CSR and consumers are becoming more involved in ethical value of sustainable issues. However, yet, most people still perceive sustainable products as “alternatives” due to various reasons like price, design or simply unfamiliarity with the brand (Niinimaki, 2010). In a current situation where more and more brands are coming to the market offering the variety of choice of sustainable product, brand popularity can be a signal, or cue that help consumers to decide those of unfamiliar sustainable brand because brand popularity can influence the evaluation and decision in the sense that consumers perceive popular brand not only as trustworthy, but also superior to others (Dean, 1999). In terms of brand popularity, “popular” brands tend to acquire more favorable evaluations and larger user shares with, rather than without the popularity component. However, with such characteristics, brand popularity concept can be used within a cue utilization theory, which suggests that products consist of an array of cues (extrinsic and intrinsic) that serves as indicators of quality for consumers when they make decisions related to the product (Olsen, 1972), delivering brand popularity by extrinsic cue through advertising. In addition, the signaling theory suggests that when brand is ranked as popular, consumers assume there are trust and confidence behind the brand, which reduce their level of uncertainty (Dean, 1999). As such, while it has been argued that this cue could be useful as it provides a certain value to consumers and influence their opinion about the brand and, consequently, purchase decision, up to now, there are little studies that use the brand popularity concept as extrinsic cue. Along with the issue of brand popularity, although different consumers around the world make their decisions based on their own mental or physiological orientation, and the difference among consumer behavior has been widely studied and reported, yet, most of sustainable marketing campaigns are made in the similar fashion, without adapting them to specific traits of consumers in different countries. However, in order for sustainable brand to become main stream it is important to understand how the traits of consumers from other countries differ. Thus, it is important to understand the cultural difference in terms of marketing.Therefore, this study adapts brand popularity concept as an extrinsic cue that serves as a certain indicator for consumers (Dean, 1999) and consumer decision making styles as mental characteristics for shopping orientation (Sproles & Kendall, 1986) in order to see cross-cultural difference in consumers’ perception of sustainability brand among 3 countries: Korea, China and Russia. Choice of countries is not only resulting from the difference in behavior and attitudes towards sustainable consumption of Greendex (National Geographic & Globescan, 2013), but also, the difference among countries even when belonging as a part of Asia. Thus this study investigates overall consumers’ decision making style among three countries of South Korea, China, and Russia to find the effect of brand popularity on brand evaluation. Additionally, the moderating effect of fashion leadership and sustainability involvement was preceded. From this, it aims to provide implication for positioning and marketing sustainable brand in accordance to the difference consumer segmentation. A study was designed to determine which dimensions of consumer style inventory of country are most frequently associated in accordance to countries and whether brand popularity had affect on purchase intention of sustainable brand. The hypotheses were tested with a data set developed form field survey. The study was conducted cross-nationally in Korea, China, and Russia using online and offline survey. The survey questionnaire reflected a quasi-experimental design. The between-subjects design employed consisted of two between-subject factors of brand popularity and consumer decision-making style. The factor brand popularity had two levels: one provided with a brand popularity ranking as an extrinsic cue and one without. The resultant questionnaire was pretest by natives before distributing. No discrepancies among the surveys were reported. The consumer decision making style had three levels of Korea, China, and Russia. The questionnaire was pretest by 30 fashion marketing researchers before distributing. Of the 376 samples collected, 6 were returned incomplete. An additional 18 samples were deleted for further analysis as the answers were unusable. In total 352 samples – 113, 121 and 118 samples from Korea, China and Russia respectively – were subjected for final analysis.A one-way MANOVA revealed a significant multivariate main effect for consumer decision making style of the nation (Pillai’s trace = .23, F (10, 676) = 9, p <. 000). Given the significance of the overall test, the univariate main effects were examined. Significant univariate main effects for consumer decision making style of nation were obtained for quality (F = 6.95, p <.01), for uniqueness (F =7.54 , p <.01), for favorability (F =6.94 , p <.01), and for purchase intension (F =4.33 , p <.05). Significant nation pairwise differences were obtained in popularity among Korea, China, and Russia. In case of Korea, the effect of brand popularity yielded significantly higher mean score when it was presented. However, for China, the effect of brand popularity was significant as well (Pillai’s trace = .10, F (5, 114) = 2.45, p <. 05). Meanwhile, the outcome of Russia had different aspect to the prior two countries with no significant difference at all. The t-test provides evidence to support the claim that the effect of brand popularity differs according to the consumer decision making style of nations. Participants were placed into "high" or "low" fashion leader groups on the basis of previously obtained attitude. The group was divided according to the mean value (X = 2.98). Significant nation pairwise differences were obtained in fashion leadership among Korea, China, and Russia. In case of Korea, the effect of fashion leadership was not shown significant. However for China, the effect of fashion leadership was significant (Pillai’s trace = .31, F (5, 114) = 10.27, p <. 001). Russia also had dramatic effect of fashion leadership (Pillai’s trace = .12, F (5, 110) = 3.03). Significant nation pairwise differences were obtained in sustainability involvement among Korea, China, and Russia. The significant dependent variables appear differed by nations. In case of Korea, the effect of sustainability involvement was significant (Pillai’s trace = .17, F (5, 105) = 4.33, p <. 01). Similarly, the effect of sustainability involvement in China was significant (Pillai’s trace = .20, F (5, 114) = 5.82, p <. 001). The result of Russian was not significant. This study examines the overall effect of brand popularity and consumer decision making styles among three countries: South Korea, China, and Russia on customer evaluation of sustainable brand with the moderate role of fashion leadership and sustainability involvement. This study found that the effect of brand popularity differs according to the consumer decision making style of nations, fashion leadership, and sustainability involvement. Thus, consumer culture should be considered when applying such communication strategy. The result revealed that first hypothesis that brand popularity will affect consumer evaluation on the sustainable brand was denied. This can be explained due to the experimental condition of this study where it applied a virtual brand and the virtual institutions for evaluation. However, in more specific, this can be described as due to the cross national method of this study. The previous studies only focus on proceeding study in one country (Kim & Chung,1997; Rao & Monroe, 1988). It was found that Koreans tend to be more recreational, impulsive, confused by overchoice, brand conscious, and habitual whereas China brand conscious, impulsive, and less confused by overchoice. Russia was scored significantly low on all above mentioned criteria. The moderating effect of consumer decision making style of nation was investigated. The result indicated significant difference of consumer decision making style of nation. Whereas Korean had positive effect of brand popularity on brand evaluation when presented, China showed negative influence, and Russia had no significant impact. This can be due to the Korean consumers’ tendency to value trust and reputation. Individual Korean consumers tend to buy products of large we The third hypothesis of fashion leadership negatively affecting the effect of brand popularity was also partially supported. The significant dependent variables appear differed by nations. In case of Korea, the effect of fashion leadership did not shown significant, yet China and Russia did. However, while China had positive effect of brand popularity, especially to those with high fashion leadership, Russia had negative effect of brand popularity. The difference on consumer decision making style in between high and low fashion leadership groups was investigated. For Korea, involved subjects were significantly more novelty conscious, hedonic shopper, habitual. In case of China, involved subjects were significantly more perfectionism, brand conscious, novelty conscious, impulsive, confused by overchoice, and habitual Lastly, for Russia, involved subjects were significantly less brand conscious novelty conscious, hedonic, impulsive, and habitual. The result of Korea can be inferred as the high trend sensitivity of Koreans. With less difference in consumer decision making style in between high fashion leaders and low fashion leaders, compared to the other two countries, the effect may have not been clearly shown. The result of China and Russia can be interpreted as that the Chinese fashion leaders being more brand conscious caused higher result when the brand popularity was provided. Yet, in Russian fashion leaders who are less brand conscious and less impulsive may have affected the rigid attitude towards the well-known sustainable brand. Lastly, the effect of sustainability involvement was examined. In case of Korea, the effect of sustainability involvement was significant. Similarly, the effect of sustainability involvement in China was significant. The result of Russian was not significant. "high" and "low" fashion leadership groups differed in their decision making style by nation. For Korea, involved subjects were significantly more novelty conscious, hedonic shopper, and more habitual. In case of China, involved subjects were significantly more perfectionist, brand conscious, novelty conscious, hedonic, impulsive, confused by overchoice, and habitual. Lastly, for Russia, involved subjects were significantly more perfectionist. The difference of the result can be explained through the distinctive culture of each country along with the result of the consumer decision making style of the highly involved groups from each country. Koreans, as mentioned above, the effect popularity cue works stronger than other countries. The tendency of preferring products with powerful brand name would have affected the result as expected. However in case of China, along with that Chinese having suspicious perception on institutional documents, significantly being brand apathy may also explain the result. In addition, Russia overall had a high score of sustainability, which can relate to the fact that although slight decrease in its Greendex recently, it has been ranked for several years now, the sustainability value itself may have worked as a intrinsic value of the brand rather than brand popularity cue.ll-known companies rather than small and unfamiliar ones (Kim & Zhang, 2009). The result of China can be explained with Chinese consumers’ characteristics of having suspicious perception on transparency of the enterprise information (Brandvista, 2013). Especially distrust on official data or the governmental exists. With Russians result, this finding are supported by several previous research that suggests that new brands coming to Russian market at the very high speed and disappears quickly due to complexity of the market, thus consumers don’t have time to strongly attach to one brand (Peskova, 2007).

All aspects of individual consumer as well as situational affecting on decisions are influenced by the social and cultural structure in which the consumer is embedded. Recently, there has been a growing worldwide phenomenon whereby tourists visit an attraction or destination as a result of that place being portrayed or represented in the popular cultural forms of the media that are not directly related with tourism promotion or marketing. A number of studies have suggested that such portrayals and features of mass media can act as powerful forces that stimulate tourism demand (Beeton, 2001). Representations and images of tourist destinations constructed by popular cultural forms of media such as films, television and literature play a significant role in influencing people’s holiday decision-making process (Iwashita, 2006). Where trade in images, expectations, dreams, and fantasies are made in tourism (Selwyn, 1996), those media representations and images of tourist destinations play a significant role in influencing people’s decision-making process. The tourism industry also is increasing appliance of images that are drawn from popular culture associated with places to promote tourist destinations and to distinguish themselves from each other. While these researches contribute to the understanding of the influence of pop culture on tourism phenomena, only few studies have investigated on the actual linkage between the pop culture and tourism perceptions/behaviors. The reason why pop culture involvement can be related to the actual intention to visit is due to the fandom created relating to the pop culture. The notion of fandom has been put forward in order to understand the link in between the pop culture and the mass audience in diverse realms (Couldry, 2007). Fandom in recent years have been understood to dismiss the negative view of pathological and the stem for alienating qualities of modern society, and accepted as a phenomena widely spread in post-industrial societies (Jenson, 1992). It is then when transitional moment takes place, in the head and heart of the fan or tourist, that the fascination begins which provides the motivation to visit the locations (Reijnders, 2011). With such cultural industries in modern society constantly produce countless contents that can be utilized as objects of fandom, resulting in actual visit to a place associated with a specific destination serving as an effective strategy for building popular cultural capital in modern society. It was therefore decided to investigate this phenomenon in more depth through empirical research to investigate how and to what extent popular cultural forms of the media (those not directly associated with tourism and destination marketing) have an effect on international tourism, and future, to identify what roles they play in influencing tourists from emerging market in terms of their travel destination image and their perception about places to visit within the chosen destination. The phenomenon in this study focuses on the Korean wave, so called Hallyu, as it is one of the pop culture phenomenon that has gained much recognition across not only within Asian countries but also recently in Western countries via pop songs, soap operas, movies, and other forms of mass media entertainment. In this study, diffusion model suggested by Rogers (1995) was used. The diffusion of Rogers’s innovation framework is proving flexible enough to conceptualize many kinds of social change, including change through processes of public dialogue and civic participation, change within organizations, as well as change through public agenda setting and media effects. Many studies have incorporated diffusion theory to explain such cultural phenomenon to gain more enrich result, however, no other studies have looked into the degree of diffusion stage in a macro level according to the regions. However, to obtain the overall view of the diffusion of such pop culture, it is needed to see the diffusion process proceeding globally as even the same fandom may differ in characteristics based on not only the diffusion stage but also its distinctive characteristics of social system. As a result, according to the diffusion stage of Hallyu, it is expected to differ in formation and perception on destination image. Previous studies identify destination image into cognition and affect which are two conceptually different, yet highly correlated components (Lee, 2008). The cognitive component leading to some internally accepted attributes, a more or less derived from factual information. On the other hand, the affective component relates to a diffusive feeling, which can become important when a decision to travel is actually considered (Russel, 1980). Such image constructed by tourists contains an individual or group perception of a particular place (Fakeye and Crompton 1991). It is expected that the image construction will vary according to the stage of the diffusion. This study incorporates diffusion theory to develop a better understanding of the diffusion process and the current situation of the Korean Wave globally to see whether such diffusion process varies according to region. Then, the effect of such difference in diffusion stages on the intention to visit the destination country was investigated. Thus, preliminary research was conducted first to see the Korean Wave phenomenon globally. In order to analyze the diffusion stage thoroughly, three regions of Asia, America, and Europe were selected. According to the diffusion degree of the Korean wave, seven representative countries were elected regarded to the regions. Along with literatures, in-depth interviews were conducted. The semi-structured form with an interview guide method was presented with reflexive interviewing techniques in order to ensure comprehensiveness (Athos & Gabarro, 1978). Then, a survey was conducted to examine the effect of pop culture involvement on formation and perception of destination image in China and Russia. Choice of countries is not only resulting from recognition as the potential future powerhouse in industry, but because it is the two countries take place as one of the highest increase in the number of tourists visiting Korea recently (KCTI, 2013). In addition, most importantly, China represents to be in the highest stage of diffusion of Korean pop culture, and Russia as one of the lowest. Additionally, the moderating effect of travel intention and travel behavior was preceded. From this, it aims to provide deeper understanding implications for targeting tourists. The hypotheses were tested with a data set developed from field survey using only online survey. Of the 265 samples collected, 8 were returned incomplete. An additional 18 samples were deleted for further analysis, as the answers were unusable. In total 239 samples – 120 and 119 samples from China and Russia respectively – were subjected for final analysis. The result in Study 1 revealed some commonalities and differences among regions. Overall, uniqueness was what made people first be interested. It was mostly pursued by young women yet those who are sometimes extremist. Thus, being open-minded to other cultures was found to be important when accepting other cultures. Moreover, it revealed that it impacts on national image to be more positive as it replaces the negative image related to war and North Korea. However, despite some commonalities, distinctive differences were disclosed among regions, especially between Asian countries and Western countries. In terms of Asia, it was found that cultural similarities have influenced the early acceptance of Korean pop culture. It has been spread since 1997, through television mostly with sensuous contents that were unique in other countries. The contents were mostly appealing to women as the characters shown in soap opera were different to others. This is very different to Europe of America where the diffusion starting in the mid 2000 through the Internet. Uniqueness captured consumers, yet in a different way from Asian countries. The easy going and entertaining aspect was the appealing factor, with word of mouth and human power was what influenced in introduction of Korean pop culture. In addition, those who were into Japanese culture were easily approached to Korean pop culture. The diffusion stage was considered to be less than 10%, with very young women interested with comparison with Asia where it was about 70%. Moreover, it was found that Asian consumers are interested in Korean brand products, such as cosmetics and clothing, and Western consumers are more interested in culture and food. Then, on the survey proceeded where China and Russia was chosen based on the preliminary qualitative research as a two different stage of diffusion according regions/countries, t-test provided evidence to support the claim that depending the diffusion stage of pop culture, the effect on formation and perception of destination image differs. A significant differences were obtained in pop culture involvement, destination image (cognitive and affective), and on visit intention. Based on the t-test statistics for Korean pop culture involvement (t = 8.491, p < .000), the cognitive image (t = -3.341, p < .001), the affective image (t = 2.050, p < .05), and visit intention (t = 2.072, p < .05) were significant. Thus, when highly involved in Korean pop culture, rather than cognitive image, consumers are more likely to be involved with affective image which relates to the actual visit intention. The results corroborated several hypothesized relationships, popular culture involvement in accordance to nation affect the destination image and perception. When more highly involved, more positively it relates to affective image and the visitation intention. The findings reported in this study have managerial implications. One is that as the relation differs according to the diffusion stage, spreading pop culture may not yield visible output instantly, yet as it relates to the actual visitation intention, international pop culture activities should be supported. Second, as shown from the diffusion process globally, distinctive characteristics of each culture should be considered more when spreading such sub-culture. Lastly, therefore, it can be suggested, that according to the countries, different approach should be made in order to induce tourist from other countries. However, this study focuses more on the macro level of the phenomenon. Therefore, future research is needed to provide more evidence on the micro level and more in-depth research. In addition, this study precedes empirical study only in China and Russia. Therefore, more diverse countries should be explored and compared.