E-ISSN : 2508-4593
Purpose - The purpose of this study was to structurally verify how the competency of consulting company affects the business performance of consulting client firms through consulting achievement and consulting utilization. It aims to provide information for successful consulting and suggest strategic measures to improve consulting performance. Research design, data, and methodology - This study examines the structural relationship between competency of consulting company, consulting performance, and performance of consulting client firms. In this model, competency of consulting company consists of three sub-dimensions such as reputation, ability to perform business, and expertise. For these purposes, research model and hypotheses were developed. This survey was conduct ed for employees of companies that have experienced consulting in the past year. A total of 195 were used for this study. The data were analyzed using frequency analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, correlation analysis, and SEM with SPSS 18.0 and Amos 18.0 statistical program. Result - The results of this study are as follows. First, reputation, ability to perform business and expertise, which are sub-dimensions of consulting competence, was found to have positive effect on consulting achievements and also found to have a positive effect on utilization. Second, consulting performance was found to have positive effects on business performance of consulting client firms. It means that the management's willingness to utilize consulting results and the achievements of consulting performance have a positive effect on the company's management performance. Conclusions - Consulting firms need to perform customer-oriented consulting by accurately recognizing what management consulting is required by the client firms. The academic significance of this study was that the research was conducted through structural empirical analysis, not only from the relationship of competency of consulting company to consulting performance, but also to the relationship of business performance of client firms. In addition, the practical implication of this study is that clients can actively utilize the results of consulting to lead business performance.
Purpose: As consumers have difficulty in brand choice due to excessive information, using brand popularity as an advertising cue (e.g., Sales No. 1, Hit Product) has been getting more attention as an effective curation strategy for decreasing consumers' cognitive efforts. Accordingly, recent studies empirically demonstrate that consumers tend to prefer and choose a brand with a popularity cue and offer a useful information regarding how to use a popularity cue in marketing communication. However, extant research has mainly focused on investigating the impact of "brand popularity in a domestic market" on consumer behaviors. Thus, little is known about the effect of "brand popularity in a foreign market" on local consumers' decision-making process. Given that domestic consumers tend to purchase imported products from overseas countries, it can be meaningful information for global companies. Therefore, this research derives and tests the five hypotheses to examine how local consumers respond to brand popularity in a foreign market as an advertising cue. Specifically, it tests the three hypotheses regarding the direct and indirect effects of brand popularity in a foreign market on risk perception and purchase intention. Then, it tests two additional hypotheses about moderating effects of psychic distance on the relationship between brand popularity and risk perception as well as on the relationship between brand popularity and purchase intention. Seventy participants are exposed to an advertisement for an Indian cosmetic brand using a popularity cue in Indian market and answer the questions about brand evaluation. For data analysis, regression analysis is employed. The findings of this research show that perceived brand popularity lowers local consumers' perceived risk with a foreign brand. However, perceived brand popularity does not have a direct impact on purchase intention while it has an indirect effect through perceived risk. Meanwhile, psychic distance moderates the effect of perceived brand popularity on perceived risk level, but it has no impact on the relationship between brand popularity and purchase intention. This research is one of the first studies that demonstrate the positive impact of brand popularity in a foreign market on a local consumer's purchase decision, and it shows the effect can be moderated by psychic distance.
Purpose: Social Network Sites(SNS) have been grown up as a public communication channel consumer frequently participate in. Most of food service brands are utilizing social media for advertising recently. As a result of SNS marketing, food service brands anticipate positive outputs from SNS engagement and consumer brand engagement so that we need to verify structural relationship among SNS characteristics, SNS engagement and consumer brand engagement. Research design, data, and methodology: This study identifies that SNS characteristics have effects on SNS engagement and examines relationship between SNS engagement and behavioral engagement. We conceptualize SNS characteristics as information quality, hedonic level and interaction. Furthermore, SNS engagement is composed of SNS participation, positive word of mouth(WOM). In order to verify the purposes of this research, research model and hypotheses were developed. All constructs were measured with multiple items developed and tested in the previous studies. Sample data were collected from 433 online survey panels and analyzed by using SmartPLS 3.2.9. Result: The findings of this research are as follows. First, information quality is positively related with SNS participation. Hedonic level and interaction have impacts on SNS participation and positive WOM respectively. Second, SNS participation has positive effects on positive WOM. Third, both SNS participation and WOM influence behavioral engagement respectively. Conclusions: The implications demonstrate that SNS characteristics such as information quality and hedonic level and interaction exert effects for consumer to participate in SNS brand page. Meanwhile, hedonic level and interaction influence on positive WOM but information quality doesn't. SNS participation and positive WOM affect consumer to engage in specific brand behaviorally as well. Therefore, food service brand marketer is required to manage SNS information quality and hedonic level and interaction among members to encourage SNS participation and positive WOM. As SNS participation and positive WOM increases behavioral engagement of consumer, marketer needs to incentivize SNS participation and look after situation of positive WOM and respond swiftly.
Purpose: Fast food franchise companies are trying a variety of innovative services to increase their competitiveness in response to changes in population composition in the fast food market and rapid changes in consumption trends due to technological development. From this point of view, franchise companies that have focused on offline store operations are providing O2O (offline to online) service as a core service for customer convenience. This new attempt is a strategy to increase loyalty by applying an interaction method based on understanding the characteristics of new generation consumers. However, existing studies are focused on the relationship between O2O service and acceptance, so very little is known about how O2O service affects customer loyalty. Therefore, this study examines the impacts of customer involvement and relative advantages of fast food O2O service on customer brand engagement (cognitive and affective engagement) and store loyalty for MZ(Millennials - Z) generations. Research design, data, and methodology: In order to achieve the purposes of this research, several hypotheses were developed. The data were collected from 247 questionnaires in their 16-30s and were analyzed using SPSS 22.0 and SmartPLS 3.0 program. Measurement model analysis was carried out to assess convergent and discriminant validity. Also, common method bias was tested using the values of VIF (variance inflation factor). The hypotheses was tested using structural equation modeling. Result: First, involvement has a positive effect on cognitive and affective engagement. Second, relative advantages have has a positive effect on cognitive and affective engagement. Third, cognitive influences affective engagement. Finally, both cognitive and affective engagement affect store loyalty, but affective engagement has a stronger effect on store loyalty than cognitive engagement. Conclusions: In the process of consumer-brand interaction, it was confirmed that store loyalty was influenced by cognitive and affective engagement sequentially. However, the results show that affective engagement has a relatively stronger on store loyalty than cognitive engagement. Therefore, it is necessary to establish an O2O service strategy to maintain long-term loyal customers by inducing cognitive participation with high-involved consumer, as well as affective interaction, in order to obtain new customers and increase customer loyalty.