Online social interactions are known to be useful to improve business performances. As l ocal business retailers have limited resources in marketing, they can benefit by using onli ne social interactions for their business performances. In the same line of purpose, the ret ailers also exploit an online platform, such as discount coupon sites: they sell online coup ons for their offline products and services in the platform. Notably, the online platform ca n play an important role in generating online social interactions as well as final sales arou nd the retailing brands. It also provides a distinctive setting for consumers in that they pur chase products and services online only to consume their use offline. Given that consume rs are motivated by different purposes, their online social interactions may differ in the di sparity of purchasing online and consuming offline. Previous studies have witnessed the r elationship between social interactions and sales, but the relationship between environme ntal influences and social interactions remains unexplored. In this paper, we focus on the influences of online and offline environments where consumers are situated with the online platform on generating online social interactions as well as final sales. To this end, we look into two types of social interactions, i.e., product discussion and social referral, and two distinctive environmental influences, i.e., the influences from the same product page and from the local retail revenue where the focal business is located. Using data on online social interactions and offline retail revenues around a major coupon site in South Korea, our empirical analysis demonstrates interesting findings. The two types of social interactions and final sales respond in different way to the environmental influences. To be specific, in the online purchase context, the absolute influence lowers the generation of product discussion and sales while promoting social referrals. In the offline consumption context, however, the proportionate influence plays a role in driving these three outcomes. Our findings suggest that local business retailers should deploy their online platform strategies by concerning online and offline environments, in accordance with the specific marketing objectives regarding social interactions and sales.

Emotion has been discussed as a key element in the purchase decision process across several products and services by several researchers (Bagozzi, Gopinath, & Nyer, 1999; Kang, Jin, & Gavin, 2010; Lee & Park, 2013). Although a variety of products and services have been utilized to address the relationship between emotions and the purchase decision process, books, especially an online-book purchase environment, have been neglected in existing research of the relationship between emotions and the purchase decision process. Thus, the purposes of this study are 1) to investigate how book covers influence consumers’ purchase decisions in an online setting, 2) to examine the influence of two different criteria of book covers (the color of the book cover and the picture or photo on it) on consumers’ emotions of delight, and 3) to explore the cross-cultural differences (i.e., Japan vs. France) in the online book purchase decision process. Emotion is referred to “an affective, subjective, experimental, temporary, multidimensional phenomenon and a source of motivation caused by exogenous factors to the individual that interact with the process of treatment of the collected information for the purpose of experience of consumption” (Graillot, 1998, p. 12). In marketing, emotion is considered to be the beginning of the choice made by consumers (Derbaix & Pham, 1989), and many researchers have tried to find dimensions of emotion which better explain the consumer’s purchase decision process, such as circumstances (e.g., hope, relief, and joy), external cues (e.g., like, dislike, and anger), or self-created cues (e.g., regret, shame, and guilt) (Roseman, Antoniou, & Jose, 1996). In order to fill in gaps from previous research, in this study we present the following research hypotheses: H1: There will be a positive relationship between the color of the book cover and the consumer’s emotion of delight when purchasing a book from an online bookstore. H2: There will be a positive relationship between the picture or photo on the book cover and the consumer’s emotion of delight when purchasing a book from an online bookstore.H3: There will be a positive relationship between the consumer’s emotion of delight and a book’s perceived usefulness when purchasing a book from an online bookstore. H4: There will be a positive relationship between a book’s perceived usefulness and the purchase of the book. H5: The impact of the book cover on the purchase decision process will vary by country. Japan and France were chosen as the countries for the study as they are significantly similar in terms of the size of the book market on the global stage (Oricon, 2015), however the two countries are very dissimilar in terms of culture. In addition, there is no existing research that compares consumers in these two countries in an online book purchase setting. A total of 398 usable date sets were collected in Japan (n = 191) and France (n = 207) using a questionnaire survey. Two sets of questionnaires were developed in Japanese and French for the respondents and the respondents were randomly chosen for this study. All measurement items of each construct (i.e., the importance of the color of the book cover, the importance of the picture on the book cover, the emotions of delight, the perceived usefulness of the book, and the book purchase) were adopted from previous studies and measured using a 5-point Likert scale. To test the proposed research framework, in this study we developed a structural equation modeling method. Multigroup confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to test construct validity, which showed satisfactory evidence of convergent and discriminant validity. Based on Table 1, there is no significant relationship between the color of the book cover and the emotion of delight, therefore Hypothesis 1 was rejected. On the other hand, Hypotheses 2 (the relationship between the picture on the cover and the emotion of delight), Hypotheses 3 (the relationship between the emotion of delight and a book’s perceived usefulness), and Hypotheses 4 (the relationship between a book’s perceived usefulness and the book purchase) were found to be statistically significant. Finally, Hypothesis 5, indicating that the impact of the book cover on the purchase decision process varies across countries, was supported. In other words, the χ² difference test between the two countries revealed that an unconstrained model indicated a significantly better model fit than a fully constrained model (Δχ²(7) = 117.58, p < .001), indicating the evidence of differences in the path relationships between the two countries (Laukkanen et al., 2013). Since Hypothesis 5 was indicated to be significant, a further analysis of each path from Hypothesis 1 to Hypothesis 4 was conducted. This revealed that only the relationship between a book’s perceived usefulness and the book purchase was significantly different by country (Δχ²(1) = 3.91, p < .05). The study provides meaningful academic implications. This study examines the influence of the book cover on consumers’ emotions, which lead to the actual purchase of the book in an online setting and accurately explains the role of consumers’ emotions in the relationship. Furthermore, this study proved that the relationship between the book’s perceived usefulness and the purchase of the book was different by country. Given this, marketers should develop tailored marketing strategies for the two countries. For French consumers, practitioners should focus more on the usefulness of the book itself, such as the meaning of the book to readers, the impact of the book on readers, the potential for improving reader’s knowledge andhappiness, etc. In other words, marketers should emphasize and promote the concept of the usefulness of the book itself rather than the design components, such as the color of the book cover. Additionally, consumers’ emotions of delight have a significant role on the online book purchase decision, therefore promoting and arousing consumers’ positive emotions, for example, with music, easy transactions, easy access, etc., may be critical while shopping for books online.

Brand equity, “the marketing effects uniquely attributable to the brand” (Keller, 1993, p. 1), is at the heart of competition in the luxury goods market (Keller, 2009). While firms competing in this segment have come up with sophisticated ways to build brand equity, they are currently challenged by the increasing importance of the internet in consumers’ journeys (Kapferer & Bastien, 2012; Okonkwo, 2009). With online sales of luxury goods showing a twelvefold increase over the past 11 years (D’Arpizio et al., 2014), it is evident that luxury brands have to be present somehow in the digital environment today (Heine & Berghaus, 2014). The strategic purposes, business potentials, and consequences for brand equity of this presence, however, are still largely unexplored and remain a paradoxical topic. As a luxury brand’s website is the brand’s most valuable digital asset (Heine & Berghaus, 2014) and as there appears to be a consensus that luxury brands can use their websites to present their products in the digital environment, at least for purposes of communication, the question arises which products are most suitable for reinforcing the brand’s image. The roles a luxury brand’s products can play in relation to brand management can be classified between four poles spanning two dimensions, which this research terms ‘accessibility’ and ‘contemporariness’, in relation to Kapferer and Bastien’s (2012) luxury brand architecture map. Empirical evidence of these dimensions is, nevertheless, scarce, and yet no prior research has investigated these product roles in an e-commerce setting. The current study develops a model to test how an online purchase option and the contemporariness as well as the accessibility of the product assortment offered on the websites of luxury brands affect specific brand equity dimensions of luxury brands. Data of a 2x2x2-online scenario experiment were analyzed, showing that prestige and uniqueness value are non-significantly affected by offering an online purchase option, while functional value increases significantly. Regarding the displayed product assortment, the brand equity dimensions of functionality, prestige, and uniqueness are found to be significantly affected by the inaccessibility of the products, while their contemporariness elicits significant changes in uniqueness value. The study also assesses the mediating role of the brand attributes of availability, price premium, aesthetics, and innovativeness, as well as the moderating role of consumers’ prior brand ownership, for these effects.

The online game market has grown rapidly in worldwide. The world game market earned 111.7 billion US dollars and online game occupies 18.9% (21.1 billion US dollars) in the world game market in 2012. Online game companies have launched a variety of free online games to online game players such as League of Legends (LOL), World of Tank, and Hearthstone. These online games provide online game with free install with online game players. Online game companies, however, sell some of online game items to the game users. For example, LOL sells Skin that is the cloth which only provides fancy effect to online game hero through the online game shop. In case of ‘Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft’, game user can purchase game card deck by cash. This study was initiated to answer the following research question called “How these online game companies get profit?” because their online games are free to play. The research upon the question mentioned above leads to the second research question called “how online game users purchase the cash game items?”. To understand purchasing behavior and attitude of online game players about cash game item, this study conducts focus group interview of LOL game player to understand purchase behavior of game players for online games items. The results of focus group interview help us to understand the relationship between attitude toward online game items and consumption values. The purposes of this study are 1) to understand online game players’ purchasing behavior for LOL luxury Skin, 2) to find out relationships among online game experience, design innovative Skin, consumption values, and repurchase intention, and 3) to draw academic and practical implications based upon the result of analysis in this study.

We experimentally tested the effect of presenting a garment on a contextualized versus decontextualized setting on an online clothing store. A contextualized setting improves perceived plausibility and processing fluency. It increases the perceived similarity with the actual clothing and enhances perception that it should fit well on one’s body.

Nowadays, personal media is a new tool for communication as digital cameras and mobile phones are developing rapidly. We are concerned over Cyworld users who could have different personal characteristics which will influence on buying patterns in on line shopping behaviors. The purpose of this research was to observe fashion attitudes and purchase behavior of Cyworld mini homepage users, for establishing marketing strategies by understanding consumers. For this study, one line survey was used for 500 male and female subjects who are 20 to 40 years old. Only reliable 441 questionnaires were used for analysis. The SPSS program was used for frequency, K-means cluster, t test, and chi-square test. A total of 441 respondents were clustered on the basis of 8 item self-disclosure scale, using the K-means procedures. The results indicated that respondents were clustered into two segments; 267 respondents(active attitude towards self-disclosure) and 164 ones(not active). We examined fashion attitudes in mini home page and buying behavior by self-disclosed variable. Those who are involved actively in self expression and self-disclosure considered more fashion style and trend. The major motivates of web surfing was finding a good design, and good price. High self-disclosure group tends to search many shopping mall for right design and low self disclosure group tends to search them for the right price. High self-disclosure group tend to shop the fashion products more, while low self disclosure group tend to purchase books more through the internet. We realized that active group in self-disclosure purchased their clothing accidently when they visit Cyworld.

The purpose of this study is to understand factors of risk perception and purchase obstruction by consumer characteristics and purchase experience of clothing in online. The collection of the research materials was progressed by online and offline. Out of 374 usable questionnaires used for examining this study, 278 questionnaires were collected from offline and 107 questionnaires were collected from online. Frequency analysis, factor analysis, reliability analysis, t-test, One-way ANOVA and multiple regression analysis using SPSS WIN 12.0 were conducted. Three factors of perceived risk were extracted: harmonic/image, quality/shopping process, payments. Based on these dimensions, ANOVA was conducted. The results indicated that the more purchasing experience people had, the less the extent of perceived risk they got, and quality/shopping process risk mostly among them. As the factors which obstruct purchasing decision, a security obstruction, a reliability obstruction, a convenient obstruction and an information insufficient obstruction are extracted. Also, the factors have got the result of same aspects as the perceived risk recognized by the Internet shopping experience. Meaningful differences between groups appear at security obstruction, reliability obstruction, and convenient obstruction. Perceived risk almost influenced on purchase obstruction when purchasing clothes in Internet shopping mall. When consumers perceiving harmony/image risk highly make decisions, they usually hesitate or abandon due to reliability obstruction, convenient obstruction. All the factors: including security obstruction, reliability obstruction, convenient obstruction and information insufficient obstruction made consumers perceiving quality/shopping process risk highly obstruct purchase decision.

This research investigates the relationship among product risk, financial risk, security risk, privacy risk, perceived satisfaction, and purchase intention. Validated measurements were identified from a literature review. The measurement model and the conceptual model depicting hypothesized relationships were evaluated based on responses from 306 customers using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. The results showed that product risk, financial risk, security risk, and privacy risk impacted on perceived satisfaction. Besides, product risk, privacy risk, and perceived satisfaction influenced purchase intentions. Thus, this study focused on the influences of product risk, financial risk, security risk, and privacy risk on their cognitive attitudes toward websites. That means the more consumer perceive security, the more they avoid shopping online. The study is important to show how perceived risk affects online shopping behaviors, and it invites marketers to make necessary adjustments to prevent perceived risks to increase and online shopping to decrease. The findings of this study suggest the creation of a framework on the effect of perceived risk types on online shopping. Managers need to take perceived risks into account when designing their electronic marketing channels. In addition, shopping websites should strengthen their transaction security by appropriately using various available resources and new information technologies.

This study aims to examine the influence of attitudes on customers’ intention to participate in online fashion sharing. A framework was proposed to investigate the relationships between consumer motivation, consumer attitude, and purchase intention in the manner of adopting a fashion-sharing platform. Consumer motivations are divided into three categories: utilitarian, hedonic, and ecological. The moderating effects of product replacement cycle (PRC) on consumer attitude and purchase intention are also investigated. Data collection was developed using a web-based survey where 180 consumer respondents from South Korea participated. The results of our analysis indicate that consumers’ hedonic and ecological motivations are positively related to favorable consumer attitudes, even when consumers’ utilitarian motivation is denied. Consumer attitude is also positively related to purchase intention in the fashion-sharing platform. A moderating effect of PRC is recorded between consumer attitude and purchase intention based on high and low PRC, as well as the effect of ecological motivation and consumer attitude on high PRC. This study enhances knowledge of consumer motivational factors in a fashion-sharing platform and provides insights for service providers to help them improve their target marketing.

This study deals with shopping value and trust as the factors to influence consumer attitude and purchase intention in online shopping. Utilitarian and hedonic shopping values, trust, attitude and purchase intention are incorporated into the Value-Attitude-Behavior model to find out how differently shopping values and trust influence online shoppers attitude and purchase intention when they have different purchase experiences. Data are collected from survey of 187 subjects and divided into two groups according to their online purchase experiences : 97 shoppers with low online purchase experiences and 89 with high experiences. PLS(Partial Least Square) method is applied to estimate the research model and to test 7 hypotheses. The results show the difference of the way how shopping value and trust influence purchase intention. In the case of low experienced online shoppers, trust has the greatest influence purchase intention, followed by hedonic shopping value mediated by attitude. However utilitarian shopping values have a bigger impact on it for shoppers with high purchase experiences. In the latter, trust also has a significant impact on purchase intention at confidence level of 0.05. The results also provide useful implications for practitioners to build and manage their marketing strategies. Managers of online shopping mall should react to the different shopping value by shopper's experience.