본 연구는 급변하는 디지털 환경 하에서 개인의 정보추구 행동에 영향 을 미치는 변인들을 확인하는 것이 목적이었다. 이를 위해 디지털 리터 러시와 미디어 교육 경험을 독립변인으로 하여 각 변인의 하위 구성요소 가 정보추구 행동(검색과 공유)에 어떠한 영향을 미치는지 조사하였다. 대학생 총 226명을 대상으로 온라인 설문조사를 실시한 결과, 디지털 리 터러시의 구성요소인 정서와 참여, 비판적 읽기는 검색행동과 공유행동 에 정적(+) 영향력을 보여주었으나, 가치는 공유행동에 부(-)적 영향을 미치고 있음을 알 수 있었다. 미디어 교육 경험은 학교와 가정의 미디어 교육 경험이 모두 정보추구 행동(검색과 공유)에 정(+)적 영향을 보여주 고 있었다. 이러한 연구결과는 추후 적극적인 정보추구 행동을 위해 디 지털 리터러시의 정서와 참여, 비판적 읽기를 향상시킬 수 있는 학교와 가정의 미디어 교육에 단초를 제공한다.

Due to the rapid development of technology, the environment is rapidly changing, and new regulations are emerging in the global society. In addition, environmental and social problems such as the pandemic and deepening social polarization have intensified, and the international community and investors have begun to regard ESG as a key factor in decision making. Regulations and systems reflecting ESG elements, such as the Carbon Neutral Act to cope with environmental problems and the Serious Disaster Act to cope with social problems, have already been enacted and implemented in major countries such as the EU and the Republic of Korea. In particular, the EU is pushing to publish ESG disclosure standards and make ESG disclosure mandatory next year. Given this trend, companies should consider ESG management as their business key strategy, as well as consumer characteristics and regulation.

Metaverse blends the physical and virtual worlds, transforming the customer's shopping experience. This study aims to identify the psychological mechanism in the metaverse environment and the relationship between metaverse experience and consumer happiness. To identify metaverse experiences, both behavioral and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies were conducted. In a behavioral study, we found that consumers' happiness increased when participants were in an immersive metaverse space. In the fMRI study, we found greater activation in the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and lateral occipital cortex (LOC) regions in the high level of the immersive metaverse and found a positive relationship with consumers' happiness. This paper is the first attempt in marketing to provide an integrative brain map for the metaverse experience. This brain map helps marketers better understand the consumer experience. This study suggests that only in the immersive metaverse space where virtual and physical experiences interact can consumers become one with the virtual space and maximize customer experience values.

본 연구에서는 쥐참외뿌리 추출물의 항산화 활성 및 미백, 항염증 활성에 대한 생리활성 효과와 기능성 소재로써의 활용 가능성을 확인해 보고자 하였다. 쥐참외뿌리 추출물의 DPPH 라디칼 소거 활성을 통한 항산화 활성, 멜라닌 세포인 B16F10 melanoma 세포에 대한 멜라닌 생성 억제능을 통한 미백 활성 효과, 대식 세포인 RAW 264.7 세포에 대한 NO 생성 억제능을 통한 항염증 활성 효과를 확인해 보고자 하였다. 연구결과, 쥐참외뿌리 추출물은 농도 의존적으로 DPPH 라디칼 소거활성이 확인되었으며, 양성 대 조군인 Ascorbic acid와 비슷한 DPPH 라디컬 소거활성이 확인되었다. 100 nM α-MSH로 유도된 멜라닌 생성 억제 활성과 LPS 1 ㎍/mL로 유도된 NO 생성 억제능을 유의하게 억제 하는 것을 확인되었다. 이에 따라 쥐참외뿌리 추출물은 항산화 및 미백, 항염증 효과를 가진 기능성 소재로써의 활용 가능성이 있음이 사료되어 진다.

The young generation that was born in the digital age grew up with digital technologies; they listen to music online on web sites like YouTube, which provides access to music by artists from all over the world. We conducted a functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) experiment with fifty-six young adults. The human brain generates electrical waves as long as it lives. Since the dynamic nature of brain rhythm is at work in all kinds of human brain function, neuroscientists have used brain rhythm to understand brain function. Since the work of Gerstein and Mandelbrot (1964), many attempts have been made to use random-walk analyses to account for brain responses like the spiking of neurons, cell migration, and motor variability. Like any other biological system, the brain pursues functional efficiency at all levels of operation—in the brain’s case, from the neuronal cell level to the neural network level. Before one can determine the presence of a periodic rhythm versus a random state in brain activation, one must determine whether external stimuli can shape the brain’s modulation pattern. Brain-wave patterns are affected by whether the neural circuit that governs a particular set of brain functions reaches a significant level of activation. The bottom-up processing of external stimuli can be affected by top-down processing; in other words, the execution of higher-order cognitive attention can affect the degree of randomness in the bottom-up processing of external sensory inputs like that of music. Unlike EEG signals, the rhythms of hemodynamic signals are not commonly calculated, possibly because hemodynamic signals are sluggish. The random-walk test on neural time series has been applied only recently to magnetoencephalography (MEG) data (Kipiński, König, Sielużycki, & Kordecki, 2011), and it has rarely been applied to hemodynamic signals measured with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). However, since hemodynamic responses are the result of neurovascular coupling—a dynamic event among the brain’s neurons, glias, and vasculatures—it is possible to calculate the degree of randomness of hemodynamic signals as surrogates for neuronal activity. While brain activities are inherently random and noisy in their natural state, when the brain rhythm is modified by music that provides appropriate levels of sensory stimulation, the brain’s signals will begin to reflect the music’s rhythms. This reflection is called “attunement.” The effect of sensori-neural stimulation on hemodynamic responses measured by fNIRS has been reported in neuroscience research that found that auditory stimulation and music elevated the concentrations of oxygenated hemoglobin (HbO2) and total hemoglobin (HbT) in blood flow to certain regions of the brain (Hoshi & Tamura, 1993; Kotilahti et al., 2010; Sakatani, Chen, Lichty, Zuo, & Wang, 1999). However, studies have shown decreases (increases) in children’s (adults’) prefrontal cerebral volume after they play computer games. For example, one study suggested that the level of attention may modulate the directional changes in HbO2 and HbT concentrations (Nagamitsu, Nagano, Yamashita, Takashima, & Matsuishi, 2006). The brains of children who find that a game lacks adequate levels of perceptual stimulation do not require an additional supply of oxygen, but adults who find playing the same game a cognitive challenge require more effort to perform the same task, so they require elevated levels of oxygen in their brains (Ferreri et al., 2014). According to musical theorists, when the brain is entrained, the attention follows the music (London, 2012). When members of the digital generation listen to music, the perceptual stimulation level is likely to related to the degree of randomness in brain responses as well as the quality of the sensory experience. Drawing on the literature review, we predict that TBF is higher for a stimulus that is above OSL than the TBF for a counterpart stimulus that is below OSL. We also predict that the hemodynamic rhythm of related brain regions to music that is above OSL adopts a regular predictable pattern. Hence, we propose the following research hypotheses: H1: Digital music that provides acoustic stimulation near the OSL creates brain responses in the form of higher TBF and lower randomness in HbO2 concentrations than does digital music that provides acoustic stimulation that is below the OSL. Functional Near-infrared Spectroscopy The transparency of biological tissue to light in the near-infrared wavelengths makes NIRS possible. NIRS is non-invasive and portable, and it has a cost advantage. The incident near-infrared light from a transmitting optode (source) is scattered through the tissues, and the reflected light is detected by a receiving optode (detector). The amount of the source light that a tissue absorbs depends on the light’s wave length, and the oxygenation status determines the brain’s absorption of the light. The loss of the intensity that is due to the absorption of the photons can be measured in units of optical density (Zaramella et al., 2001). The changes in [oxy-Hb] and [deoxy-Hb] can be calculated according to the modified Beer-Lambert law (Kocsis, Herman, & Eke, 2006) using two wave lengths of near-infrared light—in our case, 780 and 850nm. We used a 12-channel wireless fNIRS system (Biomedical Optics Lab, Korea University) with sampling rates of 8 ~10 Hz to measure the participants’ hemodynamic response while they watched the videos. The system consists of three light sources and five detectors (a 3×7 grid). The fNIRS probe was attached to each subject’s forehead. The detectors of the lowest line were set along the Fp1 and Fp2 electrode line according to the international 10/20 system. Measurements from channels 1, 2, 11, and 12, which contained noise from movements of the subjects’ heads, hair, and sweat, were excluded from further analysis. Neuroscience research has recorded acoustic stimulation in various regions of the brain, including the temporal brains of newborn babies (Hoshi & Tamura, 1993) and the frontal brains of adults (Sakatani et al., 1999). Since infrared light cannot penetrate hair, brain regions that are not covered by hair, such as the prefrontal cortex, are well-suited to an fNIRS study. When a member of the digital generation listens to music online, the motivation is usually enjoyment, so brain activity changes that are due to popular music should occur in brain areas that are associated with reward-related processing—that is, the medial pre-frontal cortex (mPFC) (Haber & Knutson, 2010). As the mental function of pleasurable experience that is modulated in the medial frontal cortex increases, TBF to this region increases. In particular, the processing of sounds is dominantly modulated by the brain’s right hemisphere (Kaiser, Lutzenberger, Preissl, Ackermann, & Birbaumer, 2000). We analyzed TBF to the right brain area of the mPFC at channel 5 using fNIRS. The research hypothesis predicts that songs that provide strong sensory stimulation above the OSL increase the TBFs of those in the digital generation more than do songs that present a sensory stimulation level that is much under the OSL. TBF can be directly obtained as a product of HbT (Wyatt et al., 1990). After the music began in the experiment, the subjects’ concentrations of HbT increased until HbT reached its peak at around five to eight seconds; then it decreased for the next thirty seconds. There was a divide of hemodynamic responses between the two songs that had more than a million hits per day (A and B) and the remaining three (C, D, and E). We conducted repeated measures of ANOVA on TBF, measured at forty seconds, for the five songs, since TBF at the end of each set of song segments can represent the digital generation’s level of sustained attention. The multivariate test for the model was significant, and the main effect of songs on TBF was significant (Wilk’s Lambda 0.75, F(4,51)=4.249, p=0.005,  ). After the forty seconds of each song were over, the TBF levels remained at the highest level for song A, followed in order by Songs B, C, D, and E. Pairwise comparisons after the Bonferroni correction showed that there was a significant divide in the length of time that the TBF levels remained at the highest level between songs A/B and songs C/D/E (p<0.05). Other differences were not significant, possibly because the neural data contained large individual difference variances (between-subject F test: F(1,54) =38.501, .p<0.001, ). The results support hypothesis 1. Next, we examined the relationships between TBF and daily hits, and BORP and daily hits. The Pearson correlation coefficient between TBF and daily hits was 0.88 (p<0.05), and the correlation coefficient between BORP and daily hits was -0.96 (p<0.05). Pairwise comparisons after the Bonferroni correction showed that, there was a significant divide in the length of time that the TBF levels remained at the highest level between songs A/B and songs D/E (p<0.05). Other differences were not significant, possibly because neural data contains a large portion of individual variance (between-subject F test: F(1,54) =372.675, p<0.001,  ). These results are consistent with our hypothesis 1b that pop music that presents stimulation above OSL can reduce the randomness in hemodynamic signals. The changes in the participants’ hemoglobin concentrations while they listened to popular songs show a mean-reverting tendency with low BORP—a “rhythm” such that a system recovers order and balance in due time. The brain’s response to less popular songs were random-walk processes, which represents a neural drain, a process in which brain fails to recover from oxygen depletion because of boredom. In conclusion, we found that total blood flow to the right medial prefrontal cortex increased less when the young adults were exposed to music that presented acoustic stimulation near the optimal sensory load (OSL) than it did when they were exposed to songs with a level of stimulation much below the OSL. The degrees of hemodynamic randomness decreased significantly while the participants listened to online music that provided near-OSL stimulation. Online popularity, recorded as the number of daily hits, was significantly positively correlated with the total blood flow and negatively correlated with hemodynamic randomness. These findings suggest that a new digital media strategy may be required that provides a sufficient level of sensory stimulation as an essential part of marketing to the digital consumer generation.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is one of the best available devices that can record the activities of living human brain non-invasively. Its precision and high spatial resolution is matched by none other methodology. The entry barrier to fMRI research is exceptionally high. fMRI has widely been used in medical and scientific research, but its application to marketing research has been limited because of two important reasons. First, the cost problem. The MR scanning devices often cost multi-million dollars and using fMRI for marketing research can be costly. Second, analyzing data from fMRI study is another formidable task. fMRI measures the brain’s hemodynamic activities using voxel as a measuring unit; Voxels are often a cubic with 2 to 3 millimeters on one side. Since a typical adult brain represents over one million voxels in one scan volume, and each scan generally has 2 to 3 seconds of interval time, one experimental block of 40 seconds, for example, will create over 40 million data points. Compared to a typical marketing research data which in general have two dimensions (2d) of rows and columns, fMRI data is inherently 4d with added dimensions of voxel and time. Furthermore, the fMRI signal is sensitive to various sources of noises. In this talk, we offer support for marketing researchers who want to explore fMRI method for their research in the future. First, we discuss issues related to experimental design for fMRI experiments. We explain preprocessing steps that are recommended for fMRI data and show how to apply statistical methods to make inferences that can increase internal validity. Then, we will explicate how to apply big data analytics to fMRI data during this talk to find deep insights into customer’s brains. A real neuromarketing fMRI data will be used to break down the steps for fMRI research and data analytics. Finally, we will open a discussion to discover future research opportunities for marketing research using fMRI. The purpose of this talk is to lower the entry barrier of fMRI method in neuromarketing research so that more people in the marketing field can benefit from the most advanced scientific achievement of our time and discover deepest insights into our customers.

Digital and social media has become an indispensable channel of promotion and marketing to the enterprises. For example, compared to other means of promotional channels, such as television advertising, newspapers, social network services (SNS) are more competitive, more convenient, and lower-cost. Because individuals compose or share those posts anytime, anywhere, information spreads fast and wide on social media. SNS posts can affect people's perception, thus affecting their purchase intention and behavior. A large number of researchers investigated academic issues involved SNS, such as the influence of eWOM in social media on consumers' purchase intentions (Erkan & Evans, 2016). According to Lin and Lu’s research (2011), which suggests that gender difference also exists in social media. In addition, a study identified attributes of social media messaging activities and examined the relationships among those perceived activities, value equity, relationship equity, brand equity, customer equity, and purchase intention through a structural equation model (Kim & Ko, 2012). In this study, we focus on the motivational antecedents of digital buzz on digital and social media. Among many performance metrics of digital marketing, the most important one that really matters to advertisers is click-through. Click-through is believed to reflect viewers’ interest in the product contents that are being shown on screen, and based on that assumption, it opens a new navigation tab, such as the advertiser’s web site that can provide information about products and services of an advertising company. However, there is a caveat here. Since advertisements in digital and social media are often placed on top of the contents that the viewers have already been reading, viewers can accidentally click on the internet advertisements in which they have no interests. Viewers are only annoyed by intrusive re-routing during their digital activities. Hence, it is important that the digital media marketer to be able to distinguish between the click-throughs, knowing the difference between the clicks that are genuinely reflective of a viewer’s interest, or the rest of clicks that are not. For this purpose, we propose consumer curiosity and anticipation as drivers of click-through that are meaningful to digital markers. Consumer curiosity is an important variable that results in click-through behavior, digital propagation or buzz, and further stimulates consumers' consumption activities. In recent years, there are many studies to verify this theory. Online atmospherics have an impact on customer emotions, and perceptual curiosity has a moderating effect existed in the two variables (Koo & Ju, 2010). However, the research about curiosity’s mediation effect on purchase intention aroused by SNS contents is still limited. In addition, the neural research in this field is still limited. The research seeks to understand how the SNS contents affect customer’s curiosity toward the product which the content mentioned. Furthermore, to find the relationship between curiosity and the purchase intention by using neuromarketing methodology. Our goal is to discover the neural signatures of consumers’ motivational state that leads to click-through, exploration of contents, and finally digital buzz behavior. EEG and fMRI are commonly research approaches used in the neuroscience field. EEG detect electric activities in the brain waves and fMRI measures hemodynamic events to discover individuals’ cognitive and motivational states. After content-analyzing top 10 most shared posts in the fashion brands Facebook official account which included luxury brands such as GUCCI, Luis Vuitton, and Hermès), we extract the attractive posts’ content attributes to be the level of accuracy, graphic quality, and information value. Then, we create two different simulations of social media activities that instigates viewer curiosity at differing levels. By designing an online experiment that examines how different arrays of information can create different levels viewer curiosity in user posts, and by measuring viewers’ intention to propagate the posts, we are able to discover neural signatures of digital buzz. Potential implications to digital marketing of this research in establishing meaningful performance metrics for digital marketing are discussed.