Kimchi, a centuries-old Korean fermented food, has gained global popularity due to increased interest in Korean cuisine. However, little is known about the actual status of kimchi information provided by major foreign online encyclopedias. In this study, we analyzed the content and quality of kimchi information in major foreign online encyclopedias, such as Baidu Baike, Encyclopædia Britannica, Citizendium, and Wikipedia. Our results revealed that the kimchi information provided by these encyclopedias was often inaccurate or inadequate, despite kimchi being a fundamental part of Korean cuisine. The most common inaccuracies were related to the definition and origins of kimchi and its ingredients and preparation methods. Our findings highlight the need for more accurate and reliable information about kimchi in major foreign online encyclopedias. This is particularly important in the context of promoting Korean food culture and increasing international awareness of kimchi. To achieve this, the collaborative efforts of Korean food experts and online encyclopedias are needed to ensure the accurate representation of kimchi in these resources. In conclusion, our study shows that foreign online encyclopedias often contain incomplete, inaccurate information about kimchi. This shortcoming must be addressed to promote a more accurate and comprehensive understanding of kimchi and Korean cuisine.

In the rapidly changing online shopping environment, resulting from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, companies are implementing sales promotions, such as offering various discount coupons, to increase consumers' product purchase volume. They are also attracting consumers through low-price appeals, with the expectation of improving sales. However, sales promotions issued by companies have numerous usage conditions, and consumers need to make appropriate efforts to meet the stated conditions. Previous research on promotions and consumer behavior has primarily focused on analyzing monetary promotions (such as full discounts) or non-monetary promotions (such as reward points) individually, with little attention paid to a comparative analysis of the two. Additionally, the type of promoted product can impact consumer behavior.

In this study, text mining was conducted on the product names of skirts, pants, shirts/ blouses, and dresses to analyze the characteristics of keywords appearing in online shopping product names. As a result of frequency analysis, the number of keywords that appeared 0.5% or more for each item was around 30, and the number of keywords that appeared 0.1% or more was around 150. The cumulative distribution rate of 150 terms was around 80%. Accordingly, information on 150 key terms was analyzed, from which item, clothing composition, and material information were the found to be the most important types of information (ranking in the top five of all items). In addition, fit and style information for skirts and pants and length information for skirts and dresses were also considered important information. Keywords representing clothing composition information were: banding, high waist, and split for skirts and pants; and V-neck, tie, long sleeves, and puff for shirts/blouses and dresses. It was possible to identify the current design characteristics preferred by consumers from this information. However, there were also problems with terminology that hindered the connection between sellers and consumers. The most common problems were the use of various terms with the same meaning and irregular use of Korean and English terms. However, as a result of using co-appearance frequency analysis, it can be interpreted that there is little intention for product exposure, so it is recommended to avoid it.

The expansion of the online market is expected to change the purchasing environment. The purpose of this study is to examine the difference in the moderating effect of each characteristic on perceived quality and purchase intention according to the group according to product involvement and purchaser age. The first step is to identify the characteristics of online information sources and social media platforms through a literature review. Next, when perceived quality affects purchase intention, we verify the moderating effect according to the characteristics of online information sources and social media platforms. The moderating effect is verified at the stage by dividing it into a group according to product involvement and a group according to age. The following results were confirmed throughout the study: First, perceived quality significantly affects purchase intention. Second, in the relationship between perceived quality and purchase intention, the influence of the moderating effect is different depending on the high-involvement product and the low-involvement product. Third, it was confirmed that there was a difference in the moderating effect of online information sources and social media platforms in the relationship between perceived quality and purchase intention according to age. This study intends to increase consumers' purchase intentions by identifying specific age groups and product groups of involvement and establishing strategies suitable for the characteristics of online information sources and social media platforms.

The purpose of the current study was to examine the role of information on shapewear’s functionality in consumers’ purchase decisions in an online shopping context. Through two steps of stimulus development process, four mock websites were developed to conduct a main study. In the main study, a 2 (visual information: absent vs. present images of the shapewear’s functionality) x 2 (verbal information: absent vs. present descriptions of the shapewear’s functionality) between-subject factorial design was employed to examine the impact of visual and verbal information regarding the functionality of shapewear on the consumer decision-making process (i.e., attitudes and purchase intentions). The results showed that verbal information about how shapewear reduces the size of specific body parts (i.e., waist, abdomen, hips, and thighs) were effective in increasing perceived attractiveness in an online context, which increased attitudes and purchase intentions. In addition, attitudes toward the shapewear mediated the effects of expected physical attractiveness on purchase intentions. The results of this study provided empirical support for the importance of expected physical attractiveness in consumers’ online purchase decision on shapewear and useful managerial implications for enhancing the effectiveness of online shapewear presentations by including descriptions of the functionality of shapewear in decreasing the size of body parts.

Theoretical Background Online tribalism is an unofficial network in virtual community due to common interests and affiliation to a topic, a belief, a figure, a ritual, or a culture (A. Taute and Sierra 2014, Badrinarayanan, Sierra and Taute 2014, Hamilton and Hewer 2010). In an interconnected world, consumers influence each other by initiating, spreading, appraising, receiving and internalising beliefs via social network and shape self - attitude and information status (Hilder 2004). These widely-existing phenomena suggest more efforts to be completed to address the gaps in knowledge in the following aspects: First, the information dissemination process should be understood with a stronger support of quantifying approaches to bring forward a systematic understanding to accommodate a wide range of drives for the complex social learning and assimilating procedure (Feliciani, Flache and Tolsma 2017, Macy et al. 2003, Huet, Deffuant and Jager 2008). For example, many qualitative research such as digital anthropology and netnography abound to explain the motivations, process, and outcomes of disseminating messages in the texture of social group (Flache and Macy 2011, Granovetter 1977). As the consequence, many tentative explanations have attempted to focus on the utilities of information circulation (Dupor, Kitamura and Tsuruga 2010, Gruhl et al. 2004, Kim and Baek 2014) and social influences (Gupta and Kim 2004, Kim and Baek 2014) but ended up with only incapability of modelling and quantifying the process. Within this trend, notably, two factors underpinning the changes in virtual community, i.e., individual’s information utility, motivation of seeking for conformity, remains a secret. In addition, it’s unclear that why and how active customers behave different from inactive ones from a perspective of information flow and social learning. Second, there is a lack of knowledge of how the intrinsic connections and dialectical dynamic between self-solicited individuals take place and adapt in the growth and evolution. With the tool of digitals, paradoxically, the essential ambiguity of digital openness and closure (Phelps et al. 2004), viability and tribalism (A. Taute and Sierra 2014, Badrinarayanan et al. 2014, Hamilton, Schlosser and Chen 2017), enculturation and acculturation, devastatingly remains under-investigated. Among these various perspectives to explain and model the dynamics of online community and social learning, there should exist a general framework that combines decisive bases of recipients and senders with various motives and constraints, with both subjectivity and objectivity. Opinion dissemination can therefore be understood not only as an objective procedure, but also with subjective intervention of participants where cognitive, psychological, and sociocultural factors intertwine to influence the collective learning pattern. Thirdly, some contextual findings are to be tested how the conditional relations may be established under different social settings. For example, theories show that engaged consumers usually exhibit enhanced consumer loyalty, satisfaction, empowerment, connection, emotional bonding, trust and commitment. However, literature rarely provide an answer that within a social group, how are traditions, patterns, communications, rewards, and punishments formed and evolved to lead to either conformity or dispute. To address the above gaps, this research adopts an interactive approach to deconstruct information into inputs (motivation, potential), action (interpersonal connection), and output (utility and identity). This research delivers several simulated experiments to identify how the evolution of customer opinions evolves out various patterns of self-efficacy and social recognition. The author assembles four aspects of input variables, including information utility, accordance utility, self-efficacy, and social status of consumers, and test the overall information prosperity and propensity of the social earning with different activeness levels. Findings The analytical firstly results show that active individuals exist in social group as the information hubs to dismiss the information and share a higher level of delight of owning knowledge and over time, become similar in knowledge standard. Consequently, a wider connection with and influence on mass audience of active members usually lead to a higher psychographic gain of attitudinal accordance compared with inactive and isolated ones in group. Secondly, at the individual level, the author found that the activeness in tribal group obviously result in a higher level of both self-recognition and social recognition on average. This pattern is consistent with vast literature in ethnography. And the relation between the activeness level and the self- and social-recognition level is positive. While at the aggregate level, it’s investigated that active individuals of online tribes have a stronger inclination, evidenced by a stronger propensity of spreading message, to further generate messages to impact other more profoundly when compared with inactive ones. The simulation experiment also indicated that a few contextual relations between variables, e.g., information-based and accordance -based delights, self-recognition and social recognition, information prosperity and transmission propensity, etc., moderated by the member activeness. It’s also found that extreme active individuals have a much higher marginal increase in accordance originated from the growing information volume owned in the process of influencing the society. Not coincidentally, their overall social recognition and attitudinal accordance from the group are significantly higher by the growth of personal knowledge. Conclusions This research contributes to the literature on the drives of tribal dynamics and its’ consequences on the changes of information valence and attitudinal changes and further to this, how the engagement level of individuals will influence these micro and macro outcomes. Notably, by adopting a self-reasoning method, the motives and outcomes are incorporated in a simulated method to develop not only the individual and the aggregate level of outcomes. This study also bears methodological significance by examining a series of hypotheses under the setting of a simulated online community. These findings suggest a series of contextual causality moderated between the characteristics, intentions and actions.

Introduction Online shopping has become an important part of people’s daily lives. The very nature of online shopping makes it unlikely for consumers to examine products with their senses (e.g., touch, smell) as they can do in offline stores. The consumer obtains information from a variety of online sources (sellers, other buyers, and third parties) to assess a product and make a purchase decision. This variety of online information (e.g., product description, reviews and ratings) informs and persuades consumers. While sellers’ decisions comprise most information displayed on their product’s website, other information is shown because consumers have a moral, ethical, and legal “right” to know (e.g., ingredients, weight, size) (Jacoby, Speller, & Berning, 1974). Regarding the latter information, some countries (e.g., the U.S., China, Canada, the EU and India) have regulations that require pre-packaged food manufacturers to provide a nutrition-fact label and claims displaying standardized information on product packaging (Health Canada, 2010). We ask the following question to public policy makers and marketers: Should online pre-packaged food shops also need to present nutrition facts? There are two perspectives one might adopt regarding the array of information confronting online shoppers. The first perspective deals with human information processing. This position maintains that humans’ ability to assimilate and process information has finite limits during any given unit of time, and that once these limits are surpassed, behavior tends to become confused and dysfunctional (Miller, 1956; Driver & Streufert, 1969). Conceivably, such information overload might also occur in online shopping. Online shoppers often make their selections from a range of products, each with an array of information. Moreover, they make such purchase decisions within a relatively short time period. An alternative perspective is that nutrition-fact information provides key cues for consumers to assess product quality in the online marketplace. Cues can be categorized as extrinsic or intrinsic to the product (Maheswaran & Chaiken, 1991; Anderson, 1981). Extrinsic cues are product-related attributes that can be altered whereas intrinsic cues are inherent to the product itself (e.g., ingredients) and cannot be easily altered (Rao & Monroe, 1988; Purohit & Srivastava, 2001). An online shopper's evaluation of a product is based upon both intrinsic and extrinsic cues. In the online shopping environment, few intrinsic cues are available to consumers and the disclosure of nutrition facts (an intrinsic product feature) can help to fill this gap. Theoretical Development The understanding of how nutrition information presentation influences online food sales is a substantial topic for both industry and academia. With the convenience of online shopping, the potential for food producers and retail stores to take their products online is enormous. eMarketer (2014) reports that online food and beverage purchases increased 15.2% in U.S. retail ecommerce sales, and that this trend will remain consistent. Online food shopping is extremely popular in China, with 92% of consumers purchasing food or beverages at least once a month (Weber Shandwick, 2014). Moreover, eMarketer (2016) reports that by 2020, one-fourth of China's online purchases will be made directly from foreign websites or from third-party platforms. Thus, it is important for other countries to learn about the Chinese market. Among these potential issues, whether nutrition-fact information affects consumer purchase decisions in the online shopping context remains unexplored. Nutrition-fact labels have proven to be useful cues for consumer purchasing decision in offline conditions (Shah, Bettman, Ubel, Keller, & Edell, 2014). However, researchers have been unable to determine the effects of nutrition information in online conditions with network virtualization (Mavlanova, Benbunan-Fich, & Koufaris, 2012) and information multiplicity. In addition, the nutrition information disclosed by online sellers may cue consumers to acquire healthy food. Previous research has found that when information pertaining to a food’s nutritional content is provided, less-healthy food tastes better (Raghunathan, Naylor, & Hoyer, 2006). This literature raises the issue of whether nutrition information is more effective for healthy or unhealthy products. In summary, we investigate the effect of nutrition-fact information on online food shopping. The research questions address: (1) whether and how nutrition-fact information influences food sales in online conditions; (2) how nutrition-fact information interacts with other online extrinsic cues (i.e., word of mouth and historical sales); and (3) whether nutrition-fact information is more effective for healthy or unhealthy products. Research Design We then address these issues using panel data collected from Taobao.com (the largest online shopping platform in China). We selected 45 days as our study period, and the sample comprised 273 sellers. In addition, we conduct an experiment using an eye-tracking system to test the necessity and helpfulness of nutrition-fact information. Results and Conclusion The results show that the nutrition-fact information has a significant impact on sales. More specifically, consumers are more likely to choose sellers with the nutrition-fact information, and the healthy (unhealthy) food with nutrition-fact information tends to attract more (fewer) purchase. In addition, our results reveal some interesting interactions between nutrition-fact information and other cues. Specifically, WOM and historical sales strengthen the sales impact of nutrition-fact information. Our eye-tracking experiment leads to several interesting results. First, consumers pay attention to nutrition-fact information and spend considerable time reading it. Second, a long fixation length on nutrition-fact information would reasonably increase sales. This study makes several academic contributions. First, we extend the topic of nutrition information to an e-commerce context. Second, this is one of the first studies to examine the role of nutrition-fact information from an experimental perspective. Third, we supplement the findings of previous studies on the role of food type. This study also provides several practical implications. First, governments could require online sellers to reveal nutrition information in a truthful and detailed manner at the point of sale. In addition, labeling policies not only increase nutrition awareness and protect consumers, but they can also offer a profitable path for marketers. Second, sellers should design nutrition information and other cues strategies jointly. Third, compared with unhealthy food, nutrition-fact information is more effective for the purchase of healthy food. Sellers might be encouraged by this trend and consider more strategies to display nutrition-fact information on healthy food.

To lead a movie to success, managers must understand why consumers buy tickets. Some go to the movies due to trailers or movie posters, others watch movies triggered by their friends’ recommendation. Using Bass (1969)’s terms, we may categorize the former type of consumers into innovators who are influenced by external factors such as advertisements and media reports. We may label the latter type as imitators who are affected by internal factors such as word-of-mouth (WOM). Consumers in the digital era, regardless of their motivation types, easily obtain information related to movies through webpages or social networking services. Therefore, marketers should focus on how online information influence the diffusion of products. Additionally, each country has a unique cultural background, thereby resulting in different consumer behavior. Based on the prior arguments, we expect that the US movie market would show higher innovation effect and lower imitation effect compared to the Korean movie market. Opposite to the hypothesis, there are no significant differences in the innovation effect between the two markets. However, as expected, the imitation effect of US is significantly lower than that of Korea. In both markets, the advertising level and the publicizing level do not show any significant effect on the innovation effect. However, the two variables have significant and positive effect on the market potential. As predicted, the gender and the age heterogeneity of WOM are revealed to affect the imitation effect in the hypothesized direction. Product availability, measured with the number of screens, has a positive relationship with the innovation effect in the US market and with the market potential in both markets. Lastly, seasonality shows a positive association with the imitation effect in the US market and with the market potential in the Korean market. The current research tries to explore key differences in the diffusion patterns of movies between the US and Korean markets by applying Bass diffusion model. Further, this study aims to discover the factors that bring about the innovation and the imitation effects in both markets. By employing data available online, the current study could provide practical implications on how to manage information delivered through online channels.

본 연구는 온라인 큐레이션 플랫폼을 이용한 외현적 정보의 제공이 현대미술에 대한 일반대중의 진입장벽을 낮추는 효과를 가지는지 알아보았다. 현대미술은 일반대중이 접근하기 난해한 장르로 여겨져 왔다. 한편, 미술 감상에 대한 연구들은 외현적인 정보의 제공이 미학적 감상 경험에 긍정적인 영향을 줄 수 있음을 밝혔다. 따라서 본 연구에서는 작품에 대한 구체적 정보를 제공하는 것이 현대미술을 감상하는 데에 긍정적인 영향을 미칠 수 있는지 알아보았으며 감상 경험을 심리학적으로 분석한 Leder et al.(2004)의 이론적 모델에 기초하여 외현적 정보가 어떠한 인지적 처리과정을 도와주는지 분석하였다. 더 나아가 최근의 전시 트렌드를 반영하여 온라인 플랫폼 환경을 적용하였다. 실험 1에서는 작품과 설명문이 제공되었고 작품에 대한 이해도, 관람의향을 보고하였다. 실험 결과, 해설이 제시된 조건에서 작품에 대한 이해도가 더 높았다. 또한, 긴 해설이 제시된 조건에서 해설 이해도와 관람의향을 작품이해도가 완전매개하는 매개모형이 나타났다. 실험 2에서는 ARS 설문을 추가하고 온라인 큐레이션의 능동적인 조작 환경을 재현했다. 실험결과, 해설이 제공된 조건들에서 관람의향, 작품이해도가 더 높았다. 예술사적 의미, 자아성찰, 창의성 등 Leder et al.(2004) 모델의 후기 단계에 해당하는 지표들 역시 해설조건에서 더 높은 것으로 나타났다. 종합하면, 온라인 큐레이션 환경에서의 정보전달이 일반대중의 현대미술 작품에 대한 인지적 처리와 판단에 도움을 줄 수 있었다.

Given the increasing competition in the hospitality industry, a key question is to investigate how consumer-generated reviews affect the consumption decision of tourism services. Online reviews are regarded as one form of electronic word of mouth communication (Banerjee & Chua, 2016). While researchers have demonstrated the benefits of the presence of customer reviews on company sales, an issue scarcely investigated is how to assess the impact of informational cues on eWOM adoption for consumer decision-making and how individuals process and integrate conflicting opinions from other consumers. Drawing on dual process theories, this paper analyzes: (1) the impact of systematic information cues (informativeness, credibility and helpfulness of reviews) on eWOM adoption; (2) the moderating effect of conflicting reviews on the impact of eWOM adoption on behavioural intentions. The heuristic-systematic model HSM (Chaiken, 1980) is a widely recognized communication model that attempts to explain how people receive and process persuasive messages. As Zhang et al. (2014) advocated, the HSM provides broader explanations of individuals’ information processing behaviour in the context of online communities than do other models, such as ELM (elaboration likelihood model). We build up and test an expanded HSM model anchored in dual process literature, which includes the influence informativeness, credibility and helpfulness of mixed valence online reviews (systematic information cues) have on eWOM adoption which, in turn, influences behavioural intentions. In order to test the hypotheses of the model an experimental subjects-design was carried out using valence order: positive-negative vs. negative-positive as a condition. Data was collected in January 2016 using a sample of 908 Tripadvisor heavy-users. 461 interviewees answered in the POS-NEG condition and 447 in NEG-POS condition. Participants were instructed to imagine a situation where they were going out for dinner to an Italian restaurant with friends and they were told to read a total of 10 reviews about the restaurant in the same order they were displayed and answer the questions that followed. We used an experimental design. All variables were measured with seven point likert scales. Data analysis shows informativeness activates both review credibility and review helpfulness, which in turn influence eWOM adoption. When the sequence of Tripadvisor reviews begins with positive commentaries, eWOM is a significant driver of intention to visit the restaurant, but when the user reads negative commentaries followed by positive ones, the effect becomes non-significant. This study is novel because it examines the factors that drive consumers to adopt consumer generated content (eWOM) in tourism services and to make consumption decisions. This study demonstrates how systematic information cues and sequence of reviews influence on eWOM adoption and behavioural intentions. Firstly, consumer intentions to visit a restaurant are determined by the consumer's eWOM adoption, which, in turn, is determined by three information cues: informativeness, perceived credibility and helpfulness of the online reviews. Understanding the specific effects of different information cues on eWOM adoption seems to be particularly important given the tremendous competition in the tourism sector. Secondly, this study shows conflicting reviews affect the user in a complex way. When consumer reviews conflict, if the consumer reads positive reviews before the negative ones, eWOM adoption has a stronger influence on behavioural intentions. It seems that users attribute an opportunistic view to the negative comments mainly attributed to the lack of their informativeness, credibility and helpfulness. User behavioural intention to visit a restaurant is directed by systematic and heuristic information cues. Therefore, users examine content of online reviews carefully and they also are influenced by the sequence of comments.

Customers’ final purchase decisions for electronic products are understandably influenced by previous experiences, marketing messages such as price and promotion, and opinions from other consumers (Simonson and Rosen 2014). In particular, millions of product reviews are posted daily on online review boards or social media represent aggregate consumer preference data (Decker and Trusov 2010). Past studies analyzing online reviews or word-of-mouth (WOM) have focused more on the quantitative dimension of volume of WOM (or “how much people say”), but less on qualitative dimension of valence of WOM (or “what people say”) (Gopinath, Thomas, and Krishnamurthi 2014). However, recent studies have analyzed disaggregate-level UGC by performing text mining in addition to a general analysis of volume and valence of OUGC. Onishi and Manchanda (2012) investigate the relationship between movie sales and both TV advertising and blogs. Although the authors find that the volume and the valence of OUGC (i.e., blogs) are predictive of market outcomes, they retain only certain words (i.e., advertising, award, interesting, and viewed) that consumers would find useful, therefore having general predictive power for market outcomes. Gopinath, Thomas, and Krishnamurthi (2014) address the relationship between the content of online WOM, advertising, and brand performance of cell phones and find that the volume of OUGC does not have significant impact on sales, but only the valence of recommendation UGC has a direct impact. Liu, Singh, and Srinivasan (2015) find that both the volume and sentiments of Tweets do not outperform the information content of Tweets in predicting TV series ratings. Although these three papers have investigated the importance of qualitative UGC through text mining techniques, such studies have not accounted for the detailed dimensions of specific contents. For example, Onishi and Manchanda (2012) use only 4 words out of top 30 frequently cited words for their analysis, and Gopinath, Thomas, and Krishnamurthi (2014) classify the OUGC into three disaggregated dimensions (i.e., attribute, emotion, and recommendation) without further classifications of subcategories and valence of positivity and negativity. Liu, Singh, and Srinivasan (2015) mainly focus on positive and negative Tweet contents about TV shows, lacking further classification of functional and emotional dimensions. In contrast to these studies, this study aims to examine in-depth multidimensional aspects of the content of online reviews, i.e., qualitative UGC, and their impacts on product sales. In this process, we develop defensible measurements of UGC by executing a comprehensive empirical text analysis and evaluate the impact of measures of qualitative UGC relative to volume measure of quantitative UGC. Specifically, we analyze a large data set of UGC on the 350 most talked-about smartphone games from seven different genres (e.g., action, arcade, shooting, puzzle, role playing, simulation, and sports) over a 30 month period, August 2010 to February 2013. We utilize a theoretical framework that classifies qualitative UGC into two major perceptions of functional and emotional dimensions. Prior studies show that perceptions of both functional (cognitive) and emotional (affective) dimensions should be considered to investigate their effects on perceived user satisfaction (Coursaris and van Osch 2015) and online shopping behavior (Van der Heijden 2004). It is evident that both functional and emotional UGC influence consumers to purchase a focal product (Lovett, Peres, and Shachar 2013). The functional UGC relates to the positive and negative attributes and beliefs about a product, and the emotional UGC pertains to the feelings and emotions in response to product experience. As an example, consider one innovative car-racing mobile game which, although expensive, has 3D graphics and high level of complexity. After playing this game, consumers may express their feedback on this game online by describing it as well-made, unique, but sometimes fearful (because a high bill charge is expected from excessive playing time), and addictive (because they like the game too much to stop playing it). This type of online reviews contains different types of UGC: functional (e.g., quality, innovativeness) and emotional (e.g., fear). Another layer of our analysis involves the heterogeneity of impact on product sales across different qualitative UGCs. Specifically, we consider the effects of functional UGC on product sales across emotional contexts such as anger and happiness, in other words, a simultaneous association between functional UGC and emotional UGC. For example, although a consumer may be attracted by some reviews on the high quality graphics of a mobile game (functional UGC), she may hesitate to purchase this product because other reviews express their fear about high cost of purchasing virtual goods (emotional UGC). Accordingly, we expect the functional UGC’s effects on sales to be moderated (amplified or reduced) by emotional UGC. We accommodate such interaction effects in both aggregate and disaggregate models. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to empirically identify two dimensions of qualitative UGC (functional and emotional), and shed light on the effects of multidimensional UGC categories on sales. Our findings on the influence of qualitative UGC on product sales are quite different from the prevailing view that firms should pay attention more to the volume of UGC (Chevalier and Mayzlin 2006; Liu 2006) but little to the valence of UGC (Duan, Gu, and Whinston 2008; Godes and Mayzlin 2004; Liu 2006). Rather, our research is in line with recent three papers (Gopinath, Thomas, and Krishnamurthi 2014; Liu, Singh, and Srinivasan 2015; Onishi and Manchanda 2012) in terms of the importance of considering specific contents from a vast amount of text data. However, our paper provides two key contributions. First, we show that specific categories of qualitative online UGC such as functional and emotional variables can be used to predict product sales; this result will be of a high managerial relevance. Especially, traditional methods that use simple metrics such as volume and valence of UGC are less accurate than our method that employs a sophisticated, multidimensional content analysis. Second, the results offer guidance to firms in determining which specific UGC (quantitative or qualitative; functional or emotional; under what contexts) they should focus on for increasing the efficiency of their online marketing activities. Utilizing a large dataset of online reviews on 350 mobile games consisting of four million postings generated for thirty months, the authors identified 76 representative words to describe the functional and emotional UGC using text analysis and word classification. We combined the resulting UGC volumes with weekly sales, resulting in 1,835 observations for analysis with hierarchical Bayesian methods. We find that functional UGC includes 54 representative words to describe various levels of product quality, product innovativeness, price acceptability, and product simplicity, and emotional UGC includes 22 words to express anger, fear, shame, love, contentment, and happiness. The results show that the volume and valence of aggregated functional UGC and the share of aggregated emotional UGC have the positive effects on sales. The volume and valence of functional UGC subcategories have mixed effects on sales and the link is moderated by the share of emotional UGC subcategories. These results are in contrast to those in the literature. Further, a sales forecasting model which includes 13 variables of UGC subcategories shows the best predictive validity. The authors discuss the implications of these results for online marketers.

The expertise, trustworthiness and attractiveness of the information source all positively influence information recipients’ eWOM (Electronic Word-of-Mouth), acceptance of CSR messages, as well as their attitudes to the company.

This study examines consumers’ online activities according to the categories of goods and services, applying foraging theory, and explore online information structure perceived by consumers, determining the degree of information overload. Consumers are confronted by nearly unlimited amounts of information when they gather information to make purchase decisions in an online environment. Few studies have focused on the behavioral pattern of information acquisition to reduce information overload. The available studies are limited by particular conditions under a normative perspective (e.g., cognitive limitation with item specific information only and overemphasis on the quantity dimension of information structure). An improvement may be a holistic approach that allows freedom of information acquisition, and includes an ecological perspective, which emphasizes an interaction between minds and immediate environments (Todd & Gigerenzer, 2007). In other words, to provide a better explanation of information overload phenomenon, the research includes quantity information as well as quality and environmental information in the information structure. This has been overlooked in an information overload paradigm (for example, the question of whether more or less information is better) (Scheibehenne, Greifeneder, & Todd, 2010). Moreover, Xia and Monroe (2005) argued that the majority of research about information acquisition has overemphasized information searching while overlooking information browsing, although both activities occur concurrently during processes of information acquisition. The foraging theory (Stephen and Kreb, 1986), which originated from behavioral ecology, can help explain a continuum of browsing and searching behavior through utilizing the patch framework (Kim & Hantula, 2016). The patch framework provides a different perspective for information structure in terms of the amount of data as a combination of within-patch (searching) and between-patch (browsing), thereby covering the issue of the browse-search continuum to explain issues of amount for information overload. (e.g., Detlor, Sproule, & Gupta, 2003). The current study applied foraging theory into the online behavior of information acquisition and explored the information structure that consumers establish and consider in their process of information foraging across categories of goods and services (i.e., durables, nondurables, and services). This theoretical integration would proffer some clues for information structure to reduce information overloads through browsing and searching information online. The investigations consist of ordinary activities and purchase-related activities online, frequently purchased items and consideration to make purchase decisions, strategic information foraging patterns, and perceived decisional difficulty.

Recently, food delivery apps are seeing rapid growth into a market worth 1 trillion won under a simple but unique business model of connecting nearby restaurants with consumers via smartphone. Though basic similarities with social commerce exists in aspects such as mail-order sales intermediaries, startups, types of services and market competition structure, food delivery apps resemble social commerce in many ways in that they use excessive marketing to secure market dominance, causing a spike in consumer complaints. If the excessive marketing and increase in customer complaints are not rectified, the food delivery app could also see rapid decline as it gradually grows distant from consumers, just like social commerce. Accordingly, this study will identify the factors consumers recognize as important for continuous use vis-a-vis social commerce and food delivery apps to perform an empirical analysis on what areas need improvement. After deriving the four upper factors of product, information system and service along with eight sub-factors by referring to existing literature, the areas with opportunity for improvement were derived through satisfaction level and relative importance evaluation. The results of this study present a strategic direction for maintaining customers of social commerce and food delivery apps.

This study investigates (1) how promotion activities in intra-firm and inter-firm levels influence customers’ total spending amount (revenue) and (2) how customer- and firm-generated online information influences revenue directly and indirectly in luxury hotel industry.

게임산업은 짧은 역사에도 불구하고 그 성장세에 힘입어 다른 문화사업의 성장을 선도하는 차세대 성장엔진으로 주목받고 있다. 하지만 다른 측면에서 게임산업의 성장세와 비례하여 다양한 문제점이 야기되고 있다. 그 중에서도 특 히 개인정보의 유출과 관련된 사건사고들이 연일 끊임없이 발생하고 있다. 그렇기 때문에 인터넷 기업들은 개인정보 를 체계적으로 관리하고 각종 인터넷 관련 범죄를 막기 위한 자구책을 마련해야 할 것이다. 이러한 취지에서 본 논문 은 온라인 게임 서비스를 제공하는 게임업체들의 고객 개인 정보 보안을 강화할 수 있는 방안에 대해 기존 문헌에서 제시되지 않은 방법들을 제시하여 지금까지 제시하였던 인터넷의 역기능을 최소화하고 순기능을 강화할 수 있는 방안 을 마련해보고자 한다.