Kiwan Park

Whence Univalent Ambivalence? From the Anticipation of Conflicting Reactions

The subjective experience of ambivalence results from possessing both positive and negative reactions. Why do individuals sometimes experience ambivalence when they possess only positive or only negative reactions (i.e., univalent attitudes)? This research advances and provides support for the notion that anticipated conflicting reactions underlie such ambivalence. Anticipated conflicting reactions occur when an individual possesses no, or only a few, manifest conflicting reactions and yet anticipates that there may exist conflicting information of which they are unaware. Support is provided by three experiments in which anticipated conflicting reactions mediated the influence of amount of univalent information on feelings of ambivalence.

The Effect of the Dispersion of Review Ratings on Evaluations of Hedonic Versus Utilitarian Products

ABSTRACT Using the information-diagnosticity framework, this study demonstrates that when exposed to highly versus lowly dispersed ratings, consumers evaluate hedonic products more positively than they do utilitarian products. Three experiments offer evidence to support this prediction, by comparing music files and car navigation devices (Experiment 1), fiction books and driver’s license test preparation books (Experiment 2), and two smartphone apps, a comic book and a voice translator (Experiment 3). Compared to lowly dispersed ratings, highly dispersed ratings improve the evaluation of hedonic products by reducing the perceived uncertainty of how accurately one can predict decision outcomes in terms of achieving the decision goals. The proposed effect also emerges as more pronounced when the average ratings are high rather than low. This observation adds refinements to existing reference-dependent models by showing that the pursuit of hedonic goals reverses general preferences for low over high dispersions of ratings at high average levels. Overall, this study offers an explanation for the previously mixed findings on the effect of the dispersion of review ratings by focusing on the notion of preference heterogeneity, which underlies the difference between hedonic and utilitarian products.

The Effect of Malicious Envy on Consumer Product Choice : The Moderating Role of Mental Orientation

질투는 인간의 근원적인 감정으로서 심리학, 사회학, 교육학 등의 다양한 학문 분야에서 연구되어 왔으나, 상대적으로 소비자 행동 분야에서의 질투 연구는 활발하게 진행되지 않았다. 본 연구는 악의적 질투가 유순한 질투와 비교하여 소비자의 선택에 어떠한 효과를 가져오는지를 살펴보고자 하였으며, 이러한 목적을 달성하기 위해 심적초점(mental orientation)이라는 조절변수를 도입하였다. 악의적 질투와 유순한 질투를 구분하는 가장 중요한 기준은 질투의 대상이 받아 마땅한지(deservingness)의 정도이므로, 주로 질투의 대상인 결과물이 획득되는 과정이 얼마나 정당한가에 의해 결정된다. 따라서, 본 연구에서는 과정 및 결과라는 심적 초점이 두 유형의 질투를 구분하는 실질적인 기준으로 작용하는지(실험 1), 그리고 심적 초점을 인위적으로 조작했을 때 소비자의 선택행동에 어떠한 영향을 미치는지(실험 2)를 검증하였다. 실험 1에서는, 참가자들이 과거에 느꼈던 악의적 질투 혹은 유순한 질투를 회상했을 때 질투를 바라보는 심적 초점(과정 대 결과)에 있어 차이가 나타나는지를 확인하였다. 그 결과 악의적 질투의 경우 유순한 질투에 비해, 질투가 일어난 결과보다는 전반적인 과정에 더 집중함을 알 수 있었다. 이후 실험 2에서는 현실의 소비 상황에 보다 가까운 제품 선택 과업을 수행하는 상황에서 과정과 결과라는 서로 다른 심적 초점을 인위적으로 조작할 경우, 다른 유형의 질투가 선택에 미치는 효과를 연구하였다. 유순한 질투는 심적 초점에 큰 영향을 받지 않은 반면, 악의적 질투는 과정 초점과는 달리 결과 초점 하에서만 질투의 대상이 되는 제품 선택을 증가시키는 결과를 보였다. 이로써, 악의적 질투와 결과 초점이 결합될 경우 기존 연구에서 주장한 악의적 질투의 차별화 효과가 나타나지 않음을 증명할 수 있었다. 이를 종합하여 볼 때, 질투는 각 유형에 따라 그 원인과 소비자의 제품 선택에 대한 효과가 다양한 방식으로 나타나기 때문에 이론과 실무적인 측면에서 구분하여 다뤄야 할 것으로 판단된다.

Caffé Bene Disrupts the Stagnating Korean Coffee Shop Market

Caffe Bene was founded in 2007, during which the coffee shop market in Korea had been experiencing rapid growth. Caffe Bene had to compete with existing brands, including Starbucks, The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, and other coffee shop chains native to Korea. Sun-Kwon Kim, the founder and current CEO of Caffe Bene, tried to differentiate his brand on the basis of a new concept of European ambience mixed with Korean culture, new and localized menus, and celebrity endorsements; all of which were unheard of in the retail coffee industry at that time.This novel approach allowed Caffe Bene to gain great popularity in a short period of time. Despite its extraordinary success, however, Caffe Bene faced numerous challenges, including managerial issues caused by excessive expansion and rapid growth, dilution of differentiation as a result of new entrants that mimicked Caffe Benes unique strategies, and an overall sluggish growth rate in the coffee shop market. In this case, the challenges that Caffe Bene faced and the strategies it employed to successfully deal with them are discussed.

When Does "Facebooking" Make Us Avoid Risks? The Effect of Social Networking Orientation on Risk Preference

Will consumers’ social networking orientations influence their psychological functioning on subsequent tasks in seemingly remote, unrelated domains? Prior research on social capital suggests the distinction between a bonding orientation, with which people seek to cement connectedness among exclusive and relatively homogeneous groups, and a bridging orientation, with which people focus on creating new contacts with different groups, resulting in spanning diverse social cleavages. Building on the resource depletion paradigm, we propose and find that consumers become more risk-averse after performing bridging- versus bonding-oriented activities on Facebook. We also confirm the depletion of risk-taking resources as the underlying process by showing its mediating role between social networking orientation and risk preference.