현재 K-컬처의 성장 과정에서 K-웹툰이 한국 콘텐츠 산업에서 주요 지식재산(IP)으로 자리 잡은 배경과 그 확장 가능성에 논의가 필요한 시점이다. K-컬처는 20세기 말 K-드라마를 시작으로 21세기 초 K-팝을 중심으로 세계적으로 확산하였고, 현재 K-웹툰은 독창적인 스토리텔링과 시각적 매력을 바탕으로 글로벌 콘텐츠로서 인기를 얻고 있다. 웹툰은 디지털 환경에 최적화된 콘텐츠로, 다양한 미디어 플랫폼을 통해 다각적인 비즈니스 모델로 확장할 수 있다. 트랜스미디어 스토리텔링은 이러한 웹툰 IP의 확장을 극대화할 수 있는 중요한 전략으로 주목받고 있으며, 이를 통해 웹툰은 다양한 미디어와 협력하여 통합된 세계관을 구축하고 있다. 특히, 스핀오프 방식은 웹툰 IP의 지속 가능한 발전을 도모하며 글로벌 시장에서의 경쟁력 을 강화하는 데 중요한 역할을 한다. 본 연구는 K-웹툰이 K-컬처의 핵심 콘텐츠로서 지속적인 성장을 이끌어가기 위한 다양한 전략적 접근을 제시한다.

본 연구는 전 세계가 하나가 되는 초연결주의와 다문화로 대변되는 현 대 사회의 흐름에 맞추어 글로벌 문화에 대한 관심과 이해를 넓힐 필요 성이 있다는 자각에서 시작되었다. 본 연구의 목적은 글로벌 문화 교육 을 위한 구체적인 수업 절차와 수업 활동을 제시하고 이에 대한 학습자 반응과 인식을 고찰하고자 하는 것이다. 이를 위해 다양한 미디어에 반 영되어 있는 글로벌 문화 관련 주제를 8개 선정하였고 각 주제별로 학습 자들이 비판적으로 사고하고 이해할 수 있도록 학습자 참여 중심의 수업 을 진행하였다. 글로벌 문화 내용과 수업 활동, 문화 수업을 위한 수업 방식에 대한 학습자들의 반응을 파악하기 위해 설문 조사와 의견 메모 활동을 실시하였다. 그 결과 학습자들은 다양한 미디어를 활용한 수업 방식에 만족도가 높았으며(76%) 이에 대한 이유는 학습자 참여 수업, 다 양한 매체 활용, 체계적인 수업 구성으로 나타났다. 글로벌 문화 수업 내 용과 수업 활동에 대한 만족도는 매우 높게 나타났으며(92%) 이에 대한 이유는 문화 학습에 유익함, 흥미롭고 재미있음, 영어 학습에도 유익함으 로 나타났다. 교수자들은 학습자들의 글로벌 역량을 증진시키기 위해 글 로벌 문화 교육을 위한 다양한 수업 활동의 구상을 위해 정진할 필요가 있다.

Introduction Social media communication has become a popular way for firms to engage with customers. Research shows that firms/brands engagement with fans or customers on social media is effective to improve brand equity (Kim & Ko, 2012), drive sales (eMarketer, 2015), and enhance both transactional and relational customer behaviour (Kumar, Bezawada, Rishika, Janakiraman, & Kannan, 2016). Given the influences of social media communication, how brands effectively engage with fans or followers on social media is an important question for marketers. Most research on this topic is from the applied psychology and consumer behaviour literature, whose theories and content are dominantly tested in laboratory setting. Very few research (e.g., Lee, Hosanagar, & Nair, 2017) applied real behaviour data of field settings to study this issue. Additionally, existent research primarily focuses on social media like Facebook and Twitter in developed counties. To our knowledge, no research examines global brands social media communications in developing country, like China. Due to the policy constraints, people in mainland China have no access to foreign social media platforms. There is a local social media platform in China, named Weibo. Weibo is a NASDAQ-listed company and has nearly 100 million active users monthly. Many brands, both global and local ones, have created Weibo accounts and keep engaging with their fans. For example, there are 1,452 luxury brands and 3,707 beverage brands or firms on Weibo (Weibo Data Centre, 2017). This paper focuses on global brands’ communication practices on Weibo. The purpose of this paper is to analyse how brand posts that global brands put on their social media page are correlated with fan engagement. By using real data form Weibo, we answer the following questions: (1) what attributes of brand posts on Weibo do affect fan engagement with global brands? (2) how do these attributes affect fans engagement behaviour (i.e. liking, sharing, and commenting) differently? Conceptual Framework We decompose the attributes of global brand social media posts into five aspects, which are proposed to affect fans engagement. The first two aspects, interactivity and vividness, are derived from computer-mediated-communication research (Frotin & Dholakia, 2005; Hoffman & Novak, 1996). The next two, informative and emotional attributes, are developed from the literature of advertising (Hong, Muderrisoglu, & Zinkhan, 1987; Geuens, Pelsmacker, & Faseur, 2011). The last one is localization-related attributes, which is from global marketing communication literature (Kanso & Nelson, 2002) to capture the special characteristics of global brand posts on a local social media platform. We argue that all these five aspects of global brand posts affect fans engagement on brand page. Fans engagement is conceptualized as fans behavioural response to brand posts, which will influence attitude and behaviour of other fans. There are three kinds of fans responses on brands social media page, i.e., liking, sharing and commenting. We do control the time and date of post issued, the text length of post, whether having celebrity in post, whether related to a remarkable event, the number of followers of brand on Weibo, and product category. Interactivity Interactivity is defined as “the degree to which two or more communication parties can act on each other, on the communication medium, and on the messages and the degree to which such influences are synchronized” (Liu & Shrum 2002, p.54). Interactivity requires two-way interaction between not only customers and companies, but customers themselves (Hoffman & Novak, 1996). Brand posts on Weibo differ in the degree of interactivity. Some posts only have text, picture, or video to deliver messages of brands, which has no possibility to interact with fans. Some posts include a link that fans can click to get more information, which enhances the interactivity of communication. Other posts have questions, which stimulate interaction with fans and followers. There are posts inviting people to indicate their like or comment on social media, which are considered as high interactivity as well. Advertising research has found the positive correlation between interactivity of ads and consumers’ attitude (Coyle & Thorson, 2001). De Vries, Gensler and Leeflang (2012) found interactivity of brand post on brand fan pages partially positively related to brand popularity (measured by number of likes and comments). Empirical research (Lee et al., 2017) using Facebook data showed that having links negatively associated with customer engagement, and having questions increased comments but reduced likings. For the inconsistent findings in the literature, we re-examine this relationship by focusing on global brands on a not well-examined Chinese social media, Weibo. Vividness Vividness refers to the format richness of the message (Daft & Lengel, 1986; Fortin & Dholakia, 2005). As for brand posts, vividness is reflected by the number of sensory dimensions and senses presented (text, colours, pictures, and videos, etc.). The degree of vividness influences what and how multiple senses are stimulated (Coyle & Thorson, 2001). For example, a picture post will activate more senses than a text post because the former has colour that stimulates sight more vividly than the later. Vividness is related to but differs from interactivity. Interactivity focuses on the characteristic of two-way interaction of the communication, while vividness stands for the multiple senses stimulated by the communication. Some advertising research found that a vivid web advertisement results in higher attention and more clicks (Lohtia, Donthu, & Hershberger, 2003). As a result, we differentiate vividness of each post and predict that more vivid post associated with higher customer engagement. A vivid post attracts more likes, shares and comments. Localization-related attributes Localization-related attributes are symbols that posts have reflecting the characteristics of local culture and people. The debate of globalization (standardization) versus localization has lasted several decades. Even though a global standardized marketing strategy saves money and gains scale economy, the localization approach (Keegan, 1969) is supported by the reality that each market has unique tastes. In the international advertising literature, some scholars found that many multinational firms “plan globally and act locally” (Blackwell, Ajami, & Stephan, 1991). “Global-local dilemma” exists when global luxury brands internationalize into the Chinese market (Liu et al., 2016). The marketing communication research found that it is not advised for global brands to use the same appeals and symbols in advertising across different countries (Kanso & Nelson, 2002). In other words, the combination of global advertising theme and local communication expertise can result in enhanced effectiveness. We propose, on Weibo, people are more actively engaged to like, share, or comment global brand posts when Chinese elements, such as Chinse handwriting, Chinese festivals, and Chinese celebrity spokespeople, are present. Informative attributes Besides interactivity and vividness, which capture the format characteristics of global brand posts, content-related attributes are associated with customer engagement as well. Informative content is an important side of content attributes. One important function of brand posts is to deliver messages to customers. Research shows that on social networks people tend to have positive attitudes towards informative ads (Taylor, Lewin, & Strutton, 2011). Global brand posts with specific information should result in higher customer engagement than less informative posts. Additionally, global brand posts on social media may have different types of marketing information, such as product, price, promotion and placerelated ones respectively. The posts with varying degree of informative content may change customer engagement as well. Emotional attributes Emotional attributes are another side of the content characteristics of brand posts besides informative ones. Advertising research shows that using emotion appeal in ads is an effective way to gain people attention and generate actions (Holbrook & Batra, 1987). Emotional connections between customers and brands are considered more stable than cognitive association (Heath, Brandt, & Nairn, 2006). Some scholars find that emotional appeal on banner advertising result in positive effects on click-through rates in both B2B and B2C contexts (Lohtia et al., 2003). Empirical research (Lee et al., 2017) on Facebook shows that perceived emotion in brand posts strongly boost users’ likes and comments. Similarly, we propose that emotional attributes of global brand posts on Weibo are correlated with fans engagement. We conceptualize emotional attributes with three elements, emotional tone, emotional icon and emotional core. Emotional core reflects the type of emotions, such as humour, happiness, and love, etc. Emotional tone stands for the strength of emotion, i.e. the emotion is weak or strong. Emotional icon refers to whether the content of posts has emotional symbols, which can take form of icons or net slangs. Research Design Operationalization Dependent variables Customer engagement is operationalized as three variables, the number of likes, the number of shares, and the number of comments of each global brand post. Independent variables Vividness. Vividness is operationalized as four categories standing for different vividness degree, text only, (text and) static picture, (text, static and) animated picture, (text, picture and) video. Interactivity. Interactivity is operationalized as five 0-1 variables, having link, having question, having invitation/incentive to like, having invitation/incentive to share, having invitation/incentive to comment. Localization-related attributes. This part is operationalized as four 0-1 variables, having Chinese culture image, having Chinese culture colour, having Chinese festival, and having Chinese celebrity spokespeople (we include celebrity as a control variable). Informative attributes. This part is operationalized as seven 0-1 variables, whether a post having information of (1) brand name, (2) promotion/trial, (3) price, (4) segmentation, (5) product lunch time, (6) purchase distribution, and (7) public relation event. Emotional attributes. This part is operationalized as three variables, (1) emotional icon, a 0- 1 variable, having emotional symbols or not, (2) emotional core, a categorical variable, different type of emotions identified by surveyed respondents, and (3) emotion tone, a scalerating variable from 1 to 3, standing for none, weak and strong emotion. Control Variables. There are five control variables, (1) time of posts, including date and hour; (2) length of posts, i.e., the number of Chinese characters; (3) celebrity, whether there is a celebrity in a post; (4) event, whether a post is related to a remarkable event; (5) the number of fans of brand, and (6) product category (3 dummy variables to differentiate four categories). Data We chose 6 global brands across five product categories, specifically, beverage (Coca-cola and Starbucks), cosmetics (Olay and L’Oréal), and sports (Nike and Adidas). All these global brands created Weibo account before 2012 and have cumulated a large number of followers. We select the posts from Sept. 1, 2016 to Feb. 28, 2017, within 6 months. This time duration is long enough to get analytical data. This period covers main Chinese traditional festivals, such as Mid-Autumn Festival, National Day, and Chinse New Year, which results in more variances in localization-related variables. Data were collected through two stages. The first stage was to download raw data from Weibo’s brand pages with Internet worm program directly. Each brand has its page which contains all posts it issued and the number of people’s likes, shares, and comments for each post. The second stage is to code content and get the final dataset. Most of 0-1 variables, such as interactivity, localization-related attributes, and informative attributes were coded by two research assistants. Variables of vividness were also coded by them. Variables of emotional attributes were coded by a survey to ask 500 Weibo users. This survey-based coded method is well applied in published research (e.g., Kumar et al., 2016; Lee et al., 2017). Model The three dependent variables, the numbers of likes (y1), shares (y2), and comments (y3), are count data with a Poisson distribution. As a result, the basic model is as following: 𝑦ij = 𝛼 + 𝑒𝑥𝑝(Σ3p=1 𝛽1p 𝑣𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑑pj + Σ5q=1 𝛽2q 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟qj + Σ4r=1 𝛽lr 𝑙𝑜𝑐𝑎𝑙rj + Σ7s=1 𝛽4s 𝑖𝑛𝑓𝑜sj + Σ3p=1 𝛽5t 𝑒𝑚𝑜𝑡tj + 𝛽6 𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑒j + 𝛽7 ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑟j + 𝛽8 𝑙𝑒𝑛j + 𝛽9 𝑐𝑒𝑙𝑒j + 𝛽10 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑡j + 𝛽11 #𝑓𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑜𝑤j + Σ4u=1 𝛽12u 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑐𝑎𝑡uj) + 𝜀ij (1) Expected Results This research is among the first initiative to examine social media communication in China. We are still working on the data analysis so far. We intend to identify the influence of global posts on fans engagement, which are from not only the content of posts (informative and emotional attributes), but also the design of posts (vividness and interactivity), and especially the localization considerations. We expect to find that the content foci differ fans engagement. Posts of sales promotion should be more effective to enhance fans engagement than those of product demonstration. We can identify what form of posts stimulates fans participation more effectively. We will know whether a video post is more effective than a picture post. Most interestingly, we will know how the posts combined with Chinese cultural elements on social media are responded. For example, we could compare the difference between posts having foreign and local celebrity people. We will know how different customer engagement behaviour influence by the same characteristic of posts. We can identify the most influential factors to each of three customer responses (liking, sharing, and commenting). Comparing with the research using data from Facebook or other social media outlets, we can obtain implications guiding global brands to implement social media strategy across countries.

Introduction In the contemporary business environment, fashion companies ought to cope with fundamental changes marketing communication has conventionally been performed. In response to shifting socio-demographic, environmental and market-related conditions, gradually new forms of fashion promotion have evolved (Fill, 2006). Nowadays, the global fashion industry experiences a reduced dependence on mass media advertising and an enlarged reliance on dialogic, relationship-oriented and digitally grounded communication methods (Chitty, Barker, Valos & Shimp, 2012). Against this backdrop, it is irrefutable that social media technologies have been remarkably transforming the ways in which modern-day fashion communication is practiced (Brennan & Schafer, 2010; Funk et al., 2016; Dillon, 2012; Saarinen, Tinnilä & Tseng, 2006). The competitive and widely saturated apparel market is facing an era of intensive proliferation of brands, an epoche of awe bombardment of advertisements, which makes a well-though-out communicational strategy ever more imperative, particularly in a cross-cultural context (Dillon, 2012). Yet, studies that analyze the importance of social media in relation to traditional means of fashion communication are scarce. Even though, empirical introductions start being made to this explicit issue, considerable research deficiency subsists in the realm of cross-cultural fashion communication and social media optimization. Therefore, the rationale of this paper at hand is to contribute to balance out this research gap by providing evidence from four countries.

Social media, Web 2.0 based social activity and powerful marketing tool, brought about a new paradigm for the 21st century culture and society. In line with the trend, the fashion industry is vigorously undertaking marketing activities on social media, seeking to build and maintain relationships with their customers through the Internet and mobile devices. The one-way provision of information by firms to customers has evolved to a symmetrical form of customers, whereby the customers also supply information to the firms share information with other customers. Through social media services, customers not only share their thoughts and experiences but also exchange tangible products and publicize the products, thereby directly participating in production and marketing activities of brands. Such participation of consumers offers inspirations for differentiated service on the part of the brands, for which proactive and long-term participatory activities of customers are required. Customer participation is of primary importance in current service marketing industry. Until now, related literature on customer participation has mostly centered on offline service situations. However, the advent of social media has simplified the process of participation for customers, and invoking voluntary customer participation has become the greatest challenge facing service industries, and, at the same time, the path to success. Those of us who live in the age of information technology are offered the opportunity to engage in two-way communication with other customers, the brand, and the media. Thus, customer participation is just as, if not, more important in an online environment. More and more customers are becoming directly involved in brand activities, which affect the brands as well as the customers themselves. Nonetheless, extant customer participation research focuses on developing constructs that are largely based on offline situations. Although such constructs correspond in part to the online setting, they fall short of meeting the unique characteristics of customer participation in social media. Therefore, in order to establish constructs for customer participation in social media, revision and supplementation of the offline-based constructs were found to be necessary. Based on interaction theory, this study explored the notion of customer participation in fashion brands’ social networking site (SNS) service by categorizing it into three types: customer-customer, customer-brand, and customer-media participation. In addition, it examined the external factors that influence customer social participation and how active social participation of customers in SNS affects trust and customer equity. The association between measurement variables according to the brand type was also closely examined. This study underwent two pre-tests to revise and supplement the survey items on customer social participation. A preliminary investigation was conducted on 516 respondents, and a total of 582 respondents participated in the main investigation. The respondents who were invited to participate lived in Korea, were in their 20s or 30s, and had previous experience in using fashion brands’ SNS service, SPSS 18.0 was used to conduct frequency analysis, exploratory factor analysis, reliability analysis, and t-test. Based on the results, AMOS 18.0 was used to undergo confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. The results of the study are summarized as follows. Based on the brand type (SPA and luxury) and the rate of sales, Uniqlo, a global SPA brand that boasts the largest number of SNS fans, and Louis Vuitton, a global luxury brand, were chosen for the study. The respondents consisted of consumers in their 20s and the 30s who, within the last six months, had previous experience in using the SNS service of the brands. The sample consisted of 40.7% male and 59.6% female, and 72.5% were in their 20s and 27.5% in 30s. A large percentage of the respondents were students (64.9%). The large proportion of university students reflects the trend of most active users of SNS being university students. Second, SNS service shopping context found positive association with customer-customer participation and customer-brand participation, but customer-media participation was insignificant. The results show that as the SNS is characterized by its linkage to different websites and platforms, customers are exposed to constant opportunities for participation. On the other hand, customer-media participation was found to be insignificant, which can be interpreted as indiscriminate constant supply of information that seeks to spur impulsive buying leading to antagonism of the customers. Such negative situations can be avoided by departing from indiscriminate provision of information to offering information that is customized to the needs and demands of each customer and invoking the customer to participate in information delivery. Third, SNS participation motivation and customer social participation were all positively associated. In particular, customer-media participation demonstrated the strongest influence, followed by customer-customer and customer-brand participation. As such, active participation of the customer with the brand is the most effective way to create collaborative, synergy effect or co-creation. Fourth, all routes from SNS user orientation to customer social participation were significant. SNS users in general possessed high levels of self-efficacy and tended to feel elevated as well as find altruistic pleasure in providing information that would help others. Such users participate through numerous ways such as customer-brand and customer-media participation but were the most active in customer-customer participation. Fifth, it was found that customer-customer and customer-brand participation builds trust of the customers toward the SNS service and the information or the information provider. However, customer-media participation did not indicate the same results. In order to build trust through participation, brands need to provide an inviting environment for customers to post comments and share information. Furthermore, marketing strategies, such as offering events and coupons to stimulate E-WOM activities of customers as well as creating a space for open communication are vital to building trust. Sixth, customer-media participation was positively associated with customer equity. Unlike customer-customer and customer-brand participation which requires constant physical effort of the customer, customer-media participation demands considerably less time and effort apart from the initial stages during which customization process is undergone to receive tailored information with just one click. Therefore, establishing convenient and practical system that targets the Y-generation in their 20s and 30s is emphasized in order to maintain a long-term relationship. Seventh, trust is positively associated with customer equity. Building trust is based on interactivity among people. This study found that customer-customer participation and customer-brand participation influence customer equity through trust, while customer-media participation leads to customer equity without being mediated by trust. Therefore, all three types of participation are equally important to customer equity. Eighth, brand type was a meaningful moderator to the relationship between SNS service shopping context, SNS service user orientation, participation motivation, customer social participation, trust, and customer equity. To summarize, the type of participation to encourage is based on the brand type, and as customers may have different expectations according to the brand, it is important to understand their orientations and provide customized information or an open space for communication. In addition, participation behavior has a strong potential to influence customer equity, but depending on the type of participation, trust may not necessarily positively influence customer equity. Therefore, it is recommended that brands offer credible and sincere information that customers can trust and follow. The significance of this study is that it is one of the first studies to examine customer participation in a social media environment. At a point in time where customers’ value creation is attracting increased attention, this study empirically revealed that customer-media relationship, which enables customer-customer and customer-brand participation on SNS, is also within the bounds of participation. Furthermore, this study identified the importance of relational marketing approach to brand and customer through customer social participation. By applying the concept of customer equity, which is in its fledgling stage in the area of consumer fashion marketing, it offers a basis for future research on long-term relationship building with firms The limitations of the study and suggestions for future research are discussed below. The sample of the study consisted of Koreans between the ages of 20 to 30. The limitation in the sample is inadequate to generalize the findings, and therefore, a comparative study with broader sample across culture and age is necessary. Moreover, this study observed customer participation on SNS environment. However, as there was a lack of preceding literature in this area, the measurement scales were revised and supplemented to fit the purpose of this study. The measurement instrument, therefore, needs to be further applied with different antecedents and consequences in subsequent research. Finally, due to the lack of previous literature on customer participation in SNS environment, the theoretical basis of the relationship between the variables lacked solidity. This study adapted a part of a theoretical framework to fit the context of the study to come up with the hypothesized relationship between the variables. Therefore, it is suggested that future research works toward developing and strengthening the theoretical framework of customer social participation.