Social networking sites (SNS) are defined as web-based services that enable consumers to create a public profile and a list of contacts with whom they share a social network (Kang et al., 2014). On SNS sites, consumers can find the right product, obtain advice from people, make purchases, post product recommendations, reviews and photos, and create SNS communities (Shen, 2008). The shopping motive acts as an important trigger to browse for products on social media websites. Product browsing over social media sites could influence the intention of future purchase and sharing information of product and brand with friend and acquaintances. For companies related to social media business, both intention to purchase and information sharing are crucial elements. However, few efforts have been made to identify the factors driving consumer intentions to purchase and word-of-mouth of fashion products on social media sites. The objectives of this study were to determine the factor to facilitate product browsing and to find out the causative relationship among influential factors and consumer intentions to purchase and word-of-mouth of fashion products on social media sites. The instrument was developed based on the previous literatures (Brien, 2010; Park, et al., 2012; To, 2007; Woo & Hwang, 2013) and each item was measured by five-point Liker type scales. A total of 269 data were collected during a regularly scheduled class in universities, who have experienced to purchase fashion products or make a product review on social media sites. Mean age of the respondents was 22.3 years old. Nearly 75.3 percent of the subjects were women, and more than half of the respondents (61.6%) have purchased the products (e.g., apparel, shoes, etc.) on social commerce sites over three years. The structure equation model analysis was conducted by AMOS 23.0 using a correlation matrix with maximum likelihood approach. The structural equation model was relatively acceptable (chi-square value = 136.30, df = 66, p = .000; GFI = .94, AGFI = .91, RMR = .05). Cronbach's alphas were ranged between .83 and .87. This result suggests that utilitarian shopping motives have influenced directly product browsing, purchase intention, and word-of-mouth intentions of fashion products on social media sites. The more product browsing on social media sites, the more intended to purchase and word-of-mouth of fashion products with friend and acquaintances. It implies that consumer with utilitarian shopping motives are likely to more browse, and then to more purchase and write the review of fashion products on social media sites. However, consumers with hedonic shopping motives are prone to more write the review of fashion products to their friends and acquaintances without product browsing or purchase intention on social media sites.

The counterfeit market makes up as much as seven percent of worldwide trade and is estimated as a $650 billion industry. Due to consumer demand, this phenomenon has grown over 10,000% in the past two decades and presents a serious threat to the global economy. Many luxury brand managers assume that counterfeiting damages brand image, however some experts have indicated that luxury houses use counterfeit sales to predict demand for their own brand. In this sense, brands are reacting to the effects of counterfeit purchase and need to develop a proactive strategy for preventing it. By understanding consumers’ perception of brands and how it relates to their counterfeit consumption, brand managers can better plan their marketing strategies to build relationships with consumers for increasing loyalty and preventing possible loss in sales. The purpose of this study is to understand the effect of branding on non-deceptive counterfeit consumption of luxury brands by proposing that brand equity plays a moderating role in the relationship between attitudes toward counterfeits and purchase intentions and in the relationship between social factors and purchase intentions. Specifically, this study conceptualizes the customer-based brand equity model with the Theory of Reasoned Action to develop strategic marketing implications for luxury brands. Previous research has resulted in managerial implications for combatting the counterfeit phenomenon, but it is more effective to prevent the increase in demand for counterfeits than to react to that demand. This study examines the role of brand equity to help brand managers focus their marketing strategies on specific levels of customer-based brand equity to build stronger relationships with consumers and reduce the demand for counterfeit products. Previous studies have examined the effects of counterfeits on brands, but research on the effects of brands on counterfeit consumption is very limited. This study adds to literature on counterfeits by understanding how branding can affect counterfeit purchase. Studies have used the Theory of Reasoned Action for understanding consumers’ intention to purchase counterfeit products. Drawing on the customer-based brand equity model, this research proposes brand identity, brand response, brand meaning, and brand relations as moderating variables in addition to the basic constructs of the model to extend previous literature, as no previous research has used customer-based brand equity for understanding counterfeit consumption. Previous studies have conceptualized customer-based brand equity for building relationships with customers, but this concept has never been used in the counterfeit context. This study is the first to use brand equity for understanding consumers’ counterfeit purchase intentions. This study suggests important implications for luxury brand marketers. By understanding how consumers associate with a brand, marketers can target specific levels of brand equity as part of their marketing strategies to deter counterfeit purchase. The proposed model serves as an initial step for understanding how brand equity affects non-deceptive consumption of counterfeit luxury goods. Future studies include empirically testing this proposed model and quantifying how much each level of customer-based brand equity contributes to consumer’ perception of brands. Future studies could also test the impact of branding on specific product types to analyze differences in consumers’ brand associations based on product category, as some product categories are more favorable to counterfeit consumers than others.

Substantial knowledge about how electronic word of mouth (eWOM) relates to influentials, or, individuals who either intentionally or unintentionally have a great impact on the network, is lacking because influence patterns are hardly quantifiable when human and societal components are not deeply understood. The eWOM networks in social media platforms drive the theoretical and practical progress of the social structure of eWOM and the social role of influentials. The purpose of this study is to explore the diffusion of eWOM in a Twitter network by drawing from the Diffusion of Innovation theory in conjunction with Social Network Analysis (SNA) approach. Through a large amount of data collected from Twitter regarding the terrorist attack in Paris on November 13, 2015, this study examined the social structure of eWOM network groups and identifies the social role of influential users in the network of #prayforparis. To identify influentials of eWOM in Twitter networks, SNA was conducted with NodeXL, which is an Excel add-in network analysis software. The Twitter data set was uploaded at 11 am, on November 17, 2015 by applying hashtag prayforparis through Twitter Search Network feature of NodeXL. A total of 19,592 tweets (vertices) were downloaded with a total of 20,297 edges (relations between vertices). “Justin Bieber” was identified as the most influential and dominant user in the network of #prayforparis because he has the highest in-degree (4,196) and highest betweenness centrality (51,772,745.861). Justin Bieber lost one of his friends in the terrorist attack, and his tweet about the sadness from the loss was retweeted more than 50,000 times and received 77,000 likes. Throughout the network, top word pairs respectively repeated more than 4,000 times were “thomas, prayforparis,” “rt, justinebieber,” “rip, thomas,” and “justinbiber, rip.” “Ally Brook” and “Louis Tomlin” ranked 3rd and 5th respectively with the highest betweenness centrality also demonstrated the celebrity power in the eWOM network of #prayforparis. While the three celebrities as dominant influentials were prominent in the Twitter network of #prayforparis, the social roles of fans were also acknowledged. The celebrities’ fans and fan sites have constantly diffused the celebrities’ posts by retweeting and by mentioning every tweet posted by the celebrities that they support. Without the celebrities and their fans, the #prayforparis network would have depicted a completely different style of diffusion of eWOM. The study confirmed social role of fans that constantly presented idiosyncratic manners by identifying and by linking to the public figure. The distinctive characteristics of the fans also enabled identifying the social role of the celebrity while spreading the new ideas with hashtag. The celebrity played a key role as an information hub even in a network of socio-political events such as the #prayforparis Twitter network. Thus, identified overwhelming influence of the celebrities in the eWOM network extends the areas of marketing choices and applicable strategies with celebrities.

Sustainability was first presented in 1972. It was how biological systems remain diverse and productive indefinitely. Long-lived and healthy wetlands and forests are examples of sustainable biological systems. Now, people do not only focus on economy but also focus on social, environment and culture. In this paper we try to find out how to build sustainability index based on customers’ perception of companies’ sustainable performance in fashion industry. The index was explored based on American Customer Satisfaction Index. Through testing the sustainability performance of fashion industry using sustainability index this study tries to find out how customers were affected by fashion companies sustainability performance and how to improve customer repurchase intention through sustainability performance.

The combination of sports and the IT industry has reached a variety of fields, especially in the area of broadcasting technology. Due to diverse preference of viewer and the rising number of channels, broadcasting companies provide differentiated contents to reach a dominant position. Therefore, each broadcasting company has their own strategy to produce contents through special technology skills to hold a top position amongst other companies. According to Eric Rothenbuhler's ‘media niche theory’, when there exists numerous media device with identical resources, the competition to survive between the devices become intense and soon draws a line between the superior and inferior devices which results in eliminating the less viewed media devices out of the race. To secure the uniqueness of the media broadcasting market like the ecosystem, the object is to verify the effectiveness of the convergence of sport broadcasting technology skills and IT technology. Therefore, the media devices and the newly developed technology for video production method were the independent variables. Additionally, the dependent variable was the media effect. Concretely, the media device technology variable set as 3DTV, video production method was set as the variable for FreePointView(FPV) and media effect was separated into arousal and presence level. Recent technology is developed three-dimensionally so that the viewers can feel as close to reality as possible and the most current

Sustainability is about how biological systems remain diverse and productive indefinitely. Long-lived and healthy wetlands and forests are examples of sustainable biological systems. People do not only focus on economy but also focus on social and environment. The Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) was created in 1999 which was based on economy, social and environment to evaluate and rank companies according to their corporate sustainability performance. In this paper we try to find out how to build sustainability index based consumers’ perception instead of company’s internal data and find what influence customers’ satisfaction upon sustainable fashion products in traditional fashion markets. The data was collected in Dongdaemun Market which is the biggest Korean traditional fashion market.

Service customers influence the quality of service outcome through their role in the service delivery process. As a way of informing customers of their role and motivating customers to play the role well, service providers often use auditory announcements. However, how to design an effective announcement for service customers still remains largely under-studied. To fill this gap in the research, the current study examines the impact of humor in a service announcement on customer intention to comply with the announced message. Specifically, we examine the impact of two humor design factors: location of humor in the announcement and the degree of message-relatedness of the humor. Further, we explore the structure of the impact of humor on customer intention to comply. We propose that the two design elements of humor will first influence the degree of customer perceptions of funniness of the announcement, which will influence the degrees of customer attention to the announcement and customer memory of the message, which will eventually influence customer intention to comply with the message. To empirically examine our hypotheses, we conducted a two (positions of humor: beginning versus ending of the announcement) by two (message relatedness of humor: strong versus weak) between-subject experiment. The context of our experiment was college students’ course evaluation. In the message, listeners were asked to participate in an online evaluation of the course which they were taking. Pre-recorded messages were played to students at the beginning of five different sections of one particular course at a business school in a major university in Seoul, Korea. The results of an ANCOVA analysis demonstrated the significant impact of both humor position in the message and the message-relatedness of the humor. A structural equation modeling analysis showed that perceived funniness influence customer attention to the announcement but not customer memory of the message. The degree of customer attention, in turn, influenced customer intention to comply with the announced message.

Due to the highly competitive nature of the apparel industry, fashion brands attempt to constantly engage consumers through various marketing strategies. Social media was found to drive female consumer purchases for apparel items. In shopping for fashion, consumers have used their personal connections on social media as an information source about different brands and products and to seek approval of their peers before making a purchase decision (Park & Cho, 2012). Cha (2009) found that female consumers look to their social media network connections for emotional connections, opinions, and approval on clothing, perfume, and accessories they are considering purchasing online. Ruane and Wilson (2013) found that female consumers use social media sites for information on where to shop and what merchandise to purchase. In studying the effect of blogs on corporate outcome, the role Millennials play is found to be significant. They are heavily reliant on word of mouth when up to 93% of Millennials has purchased a product after hearing about it from a family member or friend (Hoffmann, 2014). They not only usually read reviews prior to purchase, but also pass their recommendations via social media post-purchase (Hoffman, 2014). This age group constitutes 27% of the US population and in spite of their lower incomes, they spend more money on e-commerce than any other age group ($2,000 annually) (Smith, 2015). Therefore, this study aims to suggest strategies to fashion brands on effective blog campaign, which may eventually provide insights on how marketers can encourage engagement with female Millennial apparel consumers. The study’s objectives are 1) to examine the effect of brand awareness building customer’s brand credibility, brand similarity and blog engagement 2) to investigate the impact of brand responses on customer’s brand credibility, brand similarity and blog engagement, and 3) interaction effect between brand awareness and brand responses on customer engagement through cognitive evaluation in fashion blog context. A 3 (brand response: automated response, personalized response, no response) x2 (Brand awareness: well know, unknown) experimental design was developed through a pre-test of 139 participants. For main-test, experiment conditions and the following survey were completed by the convenience sample of 537 students in a large Southern university. Research findings revealed the significant impact of brand awareness on customer perceived brand credibility and brand similarity which were significant predictors of engagement intention. In contrast, the study indicated the insignificant relationship between brand responses and blog engagement intention. Study’s result not only suggested implications for marketers but also expanded further studies contributing on the body of knowledge.

Supply and demand patterns have dynamically changed in recent years due to the increased global competition. Firms have selected quality and price as competition components and have accomplished corporate innovation in order to achieve competitive advantage. Innovation has been recognized as the way to enhance corporate competitiveness and to continuously grow in churning global competition (Homburg, Schwemmle, & Kuehnl, 2015; Moon, Miller, & Kim, 2013). Although innovation becomes a common means to improve a firm’s performance, it has the limitation of achieving a firm’s strategic goal as a long-term strategy. Thus, firms need to have more fine-grained strategies to survive in dynamically changing business environment, such as design innovation (Moon et al., 2015). For example, Apple has produced its products (e.g., iPhone, iPod and iPad) focusing on innovative product design to influence consumer purchase intention. Design can lead to a distinct competitive advantage (Bolch, 1995). Furthermore, product design can be used by firms to create amd enhance brand recognition, as well as to increase firms’ value (Mozota, 2002). Brand experience positively influences customer satisfaction and brand loyalty (Brakus, Schmitt, & Zarantonello, 2009). Thus, we assume that design experience and product innovation have a positive effect on consumers’ purchase behavior and customer value. However, while the importance of design innovation is recognized, it is not easy to apply the design innovation to marketing due to the lack of relevant research in the field. In fact, relevant research on the influence of innovative new product design and design experience on customer value is scarce. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate how brand experiences and innovative product design affect customer value. Successful innovation is accomplished by identifying customer needs first and developing innovative products to satisfy their needs (Hauser et al., 2006). Design is seen as the core of innovation and the moment when a new object is conceived of, devised, and shaped in a prototype form (Landwehr, Wentzel, & Herrmann, 2013). Verganti (2008) studies the concept of "user-centered design," which describes how companies can use design to improve their relationships with users and develop a better understanding of user needs. In this research, design innovation has three dimensions: aesthetic attributes, feature attributes, and emotional attributes. First, aesthetic attributes focus on the product design itself. The aesthetic appearance of a product has a large bearing on its potential market share (Liu, 2003). Second, feature attributes focus on the product features and functional aspects that are required to satisfy customer needs. Feature attributes enable performance that can give results in the operating process (Crawford & Di Benedetto, 2007). Third, emotional attributes focus on consumers’ feeling when they purchase a new product to satisfy their needs. Emotional attributes are generated by consumers’ experience when they purchase a new product in the store. The more the product design satisfies customer's emotional needs, the more customers’ attention is attracted to the purchase of a product (Mokarian, 2007). A product satisfying the aesthetic, feature, and emotional attributes through design innovation provides a new experience to customers (Desmet & Hekkert, 2007). A consumer’s purchase decision making is affected by both direct and indirect experience of using the product and the function of product (Brakus, Schmitt, & Zarantonello, 2009). Therefore, a designer comes to design the product, taking an interest in the experience that the product gives besides its shape and function. Product experiences occur when a customer interacts with the product ̶ for example, when customers search for, examine, and evaluate products (Hoch, 2002). The product experience can be direct, i.e. when there is physical contact with the product (Hoch & Ha 1986) or indirect, i.e. when a product is presented virtually or in an advertisement (Hoch & Ha 1986; Kempf and Smith 1998). Brand experience can be split into four dimensions (sensory, affective, intellectual, and behavioral), which are differentially evoked by various brands (Brakus, Schmitt, & Zarantonello, 2009). According to previous studies, these four experience dimensions (sensory, affective, intellectual, and behavioral experience dimensions) have an effect on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. Customer value can be defined as the trade-off between the benefits and sacrifices as a customer purchases a product or service from a supplier (Ulaga & Chacour, 2001). Ulaga and Chacour presented three dimensions of customer value: product-related components, service-related components, and promotion-related components. The researchers argued that customer value could be an important strategic marketing tool to clarify a firm's proposition to customers. Product-related components are intrinsic product characteristics. Product quality is a key factor of relationship value (Ulaga, 2003). Customer value consists of product value and service value. Customer value can be enhanced by quality, diversity, payment, and service quality and decreased by price, convenience, and risk (Jarvenpaa & Todd, 2003). Service-related components include all aspects of service associated with the product. Various service components play an important role in differentiating a supplier's offering (Narus & Anderson, 1996). Promotion-related components include all items used to promote the product to the customer. For all purchasing processes, it is necessary to assess the perceived customer value, such as service quality and promotional quality (Qualls & Rosa, 1995). In the present study, we conducted a research survey with 300 subjects and analyzed the data. In order to test the reliability of questionnaire, Cronbach's alpha was used. In order to test the validity, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted. Measurement was made for 3 variables, i.e. design innovation, design experience, and customer value. Three variables (aesthetical attributes, feature attributes, and emotional attributes) were used for design innovation. Three types of attributes were introduced for a mobile phone design innovation. Four dimensions (sensory, affective, intellectual, behavioral) were measured using a technical design experience and a humanistic design experience. Three variables (product-related customer value, service-related customer value, and promotion-related customer value) were employed for customer value. The results of the analyses demonstrate that design innovation has a positive effect on design experience, while design experience has a positive effect on customer value. Aesthetic attributes of design innovation have a positive effect on technical design experience and humanistic design experience. Feature attributes have a positive effect on the technical design experience and the humanistic design experience. Emotional attributes have an effect on the technical design experience and the humanistic design experience. The technical design experience has a positive effect on product-related customer value, service-related customer value, and promotion-related customer value. The humanistic design experience has a positive effect on product-related customer value, service-related customer value and promotion-related customer value. This study will make it possible to empirically examine how customer's experience in design innovation affects customer value. Our results will provide a theoretical foundation for examining a relationship between variables regarding how design innovation influences customer value through design experience. It is intended to give a direction as to the design innovation of firms by clarifying and presenting antecedent factors having an effect that design innovation produces on customer value. The results of the present study will inspire designers to design in consideration of design experience. Finally, our study will provide marketers with guidelines as to how design experience can influence customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Although there has been much conceptual evidence of the positive link between customer equity and firm’s performance, comparison of relationships between two firms based on customer equity and firm profitability is limited. However, there is an increasing demand for research that investigates the relationship between firms in the competitive market structure. Therefore, the goal of this research is to examine the role of customer equity on firm profitability by comparing two firms, in a customer equity setting. The result shows that the effect of newly acquired CE of the second top company is stronger than that of the top company while the effect of retained CE of the top company is stronger than that of the second top company. Overall, the results offer strategic implications for firms to implement a different customer equity strategy in this competitive market structure.

The advent of smart shopping environments including innovative information technology, advanced delivery systems, and extended smart phone use has rapidly changed the shopping methods and activities of the consumers. They have chosen smart shopping with greater frequency, which minimizes the use of time, money, effort and energy to buy the right products and to gain shopping experiences such as hedonic and utilitarian feelings (Atkins and Kim, 2012). The concept of smart shopping is based on value co-creation which can be explained as the value from the outcome of interaction between firms and consumers (Grönroos, 2011, Vargo and Lusch, 2004). In the value co-creation process, smart shoppers are willing to perform customer participation behaviors such as information seeking, information sharing, responsible behavior, and personal interaction, and to show customer citizenship behaviors such as feedback, advocacy, helping, and tolerance (Yi and Gong 2013). In smart shopping, a consumer involves in shopping experiences through product purchases and while engaged via the shopping environments such as an elaborate store design, educational events, recreation, and entertainment (Fiore and Kim, 2007). These shopping experiences, which contain both hedonic and utilitarian value (Holbrook and Hirschman, 1982), are better explained by consumer processes, responses on the shopping environment, situation, and consumer characteristics (Fiore and Kim, 2007). The attributes of shopping experience are symbolic, hedonic, and aesthetic (Holbrook and Hirschman, 1982) and utilitarian and hedonic (Kim, Lee and Park, 2014). Smart shoppers who are involved with value co-creation obtain hedonic benefits with emotional, funny, and enjoyable feelings and along with utilitarian benefits such as rational, functional, task-related experiences (Holbrook and Hirschman, 1982). The value co-creation and the shopping experience lead to greater customer equity such as value equity, brand equity, and relationship equity (Lemon, Rust, and Zeithamal 2001). Based on previous literature review, the authors constructed the following hypotheses. First, smart shopping will have positive effects on value co-creation, the shopping experience, and customer equity. Second, the smart shopping will have positive effects on both value co-creation and the shopping experience. Third, value cocreation will have positive effects on the shopping experience. Fourth, value cocreation and the shopping experience will have positive effects on customer equity. The authors collected the data based on questionnaires from mobile smart shoppers. The SPSS 20 and AMOS 20 statistical programs will be used for the data analysis. The analysis found the positive influence that smart shopping has on value co-creation and the shopping experience, and customer equity. This is the first study that shows these relationships from an empirical point-of-view. The findings of the study have useful managerial implications on the effects of value co-creation on both smart shoppers and firms. Value co-creation will provide smart shoppers with better product or service quality and enhance firms with more valuable customer equity. The greater shopping experience is the greater customer equity that will be developed. Value co-creation also will give firms a strong competitive advantage in terms of an organization’s learning, brand perception, reduced risk, improvement of customer relationships, and lowering cost for marketing, and research and development. The study has limitations. First, other potential variables of the value co-creation influencing new service development, customer loyalty, and customer satisfaction etc, could be considered. Second, the length of the relationship between smart shoppers and the service provider in value co-creation process should be considered. Third, the study needs to be generalized to cross sectional research beyond smart shopping area. Finally, to examine the effects of value co-creation and the shopping experience on customer equity, future research could investigate how value co-creation and the shopping experience affect the objective financial performance of a firm.

We study the differential effects of a variety of WOM and mass communication activities on the means and on the variances of individual preference parameters. Analyzing the effects of communication on the means of individual preference parameters provides useful information regarding how much WOM and mass communication activities increase or decrease consumers’ preference parameters. Such a study helps us better understand how communication activities influence consumer heterogeneity. This raises a new question: “Do WOM and mass communication activities make consumers homogeneous or heterogeneous in terms of their product preferences?” This important question has not been previously addressed in the marketing literature. We propose a two-level choice model using a hierarchical Bayesian probit to incorporate the differential effects of mass and WOM communication activities, and the proper interaction between communication activities and product attributes. Using actual movie choice data, we analyze the effects of WOM communication activities compared to those of mass communication activities. Furthermore, we measure the differential effects of communication activities and the interaction effects between communication and product attributes. Based on the empirical analysis, we provide relevant managerial guidelines about communication activities.

Motivated by the recent cases of negligent social responsibility as manifested by foreign luxury fashion brands in Korea, this study investigates whether agency costs depend on the sustainability of different types of corporate governance. Agency costs refer either to vertical costs arising from the relationship between stockholders and managers, or to horizontal costs associated with the potential conflicts between majority and minority stockholders. The firms with luxury fashion brand could spend large sums of money on maintenance of magnificent brand image, thereby increasing the agency cost. On the contrary, the firms may hold down wasteful spending to report a gaudily financial achievement. This results in mitigation of the agency cost.

The tourism industry in Hong Kong is a substantial pillar of Hong Kong’s economic development because it has been a beneficiary of tourism revenues and employment opportunities. According to the Hong Kong Tourism Board, Hong Kong accommodated 60.8 million ever-high visitors flow in 2014 (Hong Kong Tourism Commission, 2014). As three major inbound markets Mainland China, Japan, and the United States have been among the top five inbound visitors since 2003. A report of the Hong Kong Tourist Satisfaction Index (Tourist Satisfaction Index, 2014) indicated that Japanese and Korean tourists’ overall satisfaction with Hong Kong decreased from 70.11% in 2012 to 66.98% in 2014. Americans recorded the highest satisfaction level concerning experience in Hong Kong as a tourist destination, awarding it 81.8%. Moreover, the tourism industry in Hong Kong has recently relied heavily on mainland Chinese tourists as the major target group; this group comprises nearly 70% of all overnight visitors (Hong Kong Tourism Board, 2015). These three oversea markets have played an essential role towards Hong Kong tourism industry in past decade.

The Social Network System (SNS) has possesses unique characteristic which distinguish it in important ways from traditional communications environment because the social network system allows a fundamentally different environment for communication marketing activities. The traditional marketing communications model was uni-directional, due to the fact that mass communication is a one-to-many process whereby a company transmits content through a medium to a large group of people. Today, communication paradigm has shifted online and is many to many, known as a bi-directional strategy. Bi-directional strategy mediates communications model in which 1) consumers can interact with the medium and with each other, 2) companies can provide content to the medium and interact with each other, 3) companies and consumers can interact, and in the most radical departure from traditional marketing environments to determine how brand relationship is affected. In this paper, we use the social network system as a new marketing communication medium. We use the key Mohr & Nevin’s communication strategies: frequency, direction, content, and modality to measure communication quality, and then implement communication quality by using the attitude and e-WOM intentions. Rich understanding of SNS communication quality can help focus the managerial efforts on vital communication factors, which stimulate positive assessments of communication behaviors. Furthermore, practitioners may better understand which dimensions of communication facets/aspects are more appropriate

The Korean energy demand-supply policy has changed from supply-concentrated management to demand-concentrated management with low consumption and high efficiency. Given these policy changes, this study focuses on investigating the marketing strategies of public policies that are necessary to execute policy effectively and to achieve the intended effect. More specifically, this study reviews details pertaining to the four elements of energy demand management policy: the development and commercialization of core technologies for energy efficiency, energy saving business growth, innovations in energy demand management, and reasonable energy price policies. We furthermore analyze the effects of introducing an energy-efficiency certification system to both companies and consumers via an energy policy implementation. We find solutions to achieve the goals of the energy demand management policy via effective marketing of the energy-efficiency certification system. This investigation contributes to developing marketing strategies to achieve certain public policy effects. We additionally focus on how the characteristics of an energy-efficiency certification system—such as public benefits, brand trust and customer value—affect customer perception and the effect of policy implementation. According to our findings, trust in the energy-efficiency certification system and the four elements of energy policy influence firms and consumers’ realization and are effective at accomplishing the goals of the energy-efficiency policy. Energyefficiency certification help firms to invest in energy-efficient facilities; such certification also motivates reasonable energy consumption levels and the option to select highly energy-efficient products. By employing a certification system actively as a means of governmental policy and providing accurate energy-efficiency information to firms and consumers, it is possible for firms to produce highly energyefficient products and for consumers to choose efficient products. In this way, governments, firms, and consumers are able to accomplish the goals of the policy.

Viral video advertising as a branded entertainment has shown its potential to overcome consumer skepticism by spreading the brand message through individuals’ social connection. Although brand placement prominence and brand disclosure may be critical factors that influence forwarding intention in the viral video ad context, less research has examined these relationship. To fill these gaps, this study aims 1) to examine the psychological mechanisms through which the brand placement prominence influences consumers’ forwarding intention of viral video advertising, and 2) to investigate the potential moderating role of brand disclosure timing. This study shows that the level of brand prominence in a viral video ad is an important factor influencing viewers’ forwarding intention sequentially mediated by persuasion knowledge, critical processing and enjoyment. The moderating role of brand disclosure timing investigated in the current study suggests that when the branded viral video has a high level of brand prominence, post brand disclosure leads to a higher forwarding intention compared to the prior brand disclosure.

Given the pervasive use of brand personification by marketers, it is surprising that there has been extremely limited research directly examining the effects of brand personification. In this article, we attempt to fill this gap in part by exploring how personified brand, in contrast to an objectified brand, might affect consumers’ response. Also, previous research have studied mainly on the visual or combined (visual-verbal) brand personification without differentiating the two types of brand personification. Therefore, this study tries to focus on the verbal brand personification which has not been studied extensively. And there are two types of verbal brand personification: external and internal image. So this study validates the effect of internal (kind) or external (looking good) verbal brand personification separately in the series of two experiments. Study 1 tests the effect of internal verbal brand personification on the consumer evaluation using product brand. Specifically, we test the moderating effect of brand knowledge between verbal brand personification and consumer evaluation and explore the underlying mechanisms (brand intimacy, psychological discomfort) about how the interaction effect of personification level and brand knowledge occurs. Study 2 tests the effect of external verbal brand personification on the consumer evaluation using service brand. Specifically, we test the effect of need-for-cognition on attitude towards personified brand ad and additionally explore the underlying mechanisms (perceived novelty, cognitive resistance) about how need-for-cognition influences. This research could provide useful guidelines for the marketers to utilize personification method when planning the head copy or slogan for advertisement. Therefore, marketers are better able to make an effective brand personification strategy through understanding the boundary conditions and mechanisms about the impact of brand personification based on the findings of this study.