Moon Young Kang

Cultural and Economic Impacts on Global Cultural Products: Evidence from U.S. Movies

Existing international product diffusion studies have identified economic and cultural factors that influence consumers’ acceptance of new products, but they have not fully examined these factors’ roles in the international diffusion of global cultural products. The authors examine country-level economic and cultural factors that influence consumers’ acceptance of new global cultural products across countries. Using 846 recent U.S. movies’ box office performances in 48 national markets as the empirical context, the authors obtain the following key novel findings on product sales: (1) an inverse U-shaped impact of economic development status, (2) a positive impact of the cultural compatibility of the product and the market, and (3) a U-shaped impact of intercountry cultural distance in the presence of cultural compatibility and a decreasing linear impact of cultural distance in the absence of cultural compatibility.

Assessing venture capital industry growth in Korea

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the venture capital industry evolves in Korea. The paper also compares the venture capital industry growth of Korea with that of the USA. Design/methodology/approach This paper forecasts the growth of the Korean venture capital industry using the Bass Model. The authors apply the Bass Model to both Korean and US data to compare the model estimates of Korean and US data, and to make use of the US case by taking the “guess by similarity” approach to analyze Korean venture capital industry growth. Findings The authors find that the innovative fund inflows in Korea are stronger than those in the USA, while inertial reinvestments are weak. The study forecasts that new investments in Korea grow at a 5-7 percent rate each year for the next five years, and the growth rate slows down over time. Peak investment is predicted around the year 2030. Practical implications Based on the forecasted venture capital investment schedule each year, this study derives the fundraising schedule and the implications for Korea fund-of-funds management to match the investment schedule. Originality/value The model estimates provide a guideline for forecasting venture capital industry development in countries with brief histories of venture capital, which lack data. The analysis can also be applied to cases when developing countries and emerging financial markets assess the impact of government interventions on venture capital industry growth, especially when they provide fund-of-funds.

Weather sensitivity analysis on grocery shopping

Although weather is known to impact consumer behavior and, accordingly, businesses react to weather-influenced consumer behavior, marketing scholars have not examined weather marketing as intensively as its practical importance suggests. To fill this research void, we choose the grocery shopping setting, where weather influences shoppers’ shopping trip incidence and basket size. We theorize that the weather event (i.e., rain, snow, thunder, and fog) decreases both the shopping trip and the basket size. On the shopping trip, however, the negative weather impact is mitigated for less frequent shoppers because such shoppers have a higher basic shopping need than more frequent shoppers. Similarly, in terms of the basket size, store familiarity lessens such a negative weather impact because shoppers in a familiar environment are more comfortable about unfavorable weather. Besides, when sustained bad weather is expected, shoppers may turn proactive in determining when to go shopping. Our empirical application combines rich scanner panel data and daily weather data to explain both shopping trip and basket size simultaneously in the form of a Type 2 Tobit model. Our analysis results support our weather marketing hypotheses.

Exploring the Connection between Purchasing and Donation

While much has been discussed in marketing about the nature of purchase behaviors in commercial contexts, very little touches upon the intersection of purchase and donation behavior. Our objective in this research is to propose a model of how donation and purchase behavior intersect and to determine the relationship between them in a nonprofit context, where donation is not by default tied to a purchase. Based on theories in social psychology and behavioral economics, we use a Poission/Gamma mixture model by merging purchasing and donation from a performing arts center. We found that various pieces of information presented in the transaction data can function as indicators and proxies of behavioral attitudes: the consumption characteristics associated with customers who are likely to be donors to the organization are different from those who are not likely to become donors.