Jungkeun Kim

Auckland University of Technology | AUT · Department of Marketing

As consumers become more aware of and concerned about the environmental impact of their consumption choices, an increasing number of luxury brands are now engaging in sustainability practices. This study examines factors influencing the effectiveness of embedding sustainability in luxury brands. Specifically, the research focus is the effect of chi...

The purpose of this research was to explore the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on consumers’ sustainable consumption behavior. It investigated whether the perceived threat of COVID-19 increased their intention to choose a sustainable hotel brand option. It examined whether environmental concern and the perceived value of patronizing a sustainab...

Several technological developments, such as self-service technologies and artificial intelligence (AI), are disrupting the retailing industry by changing consumption and purchase habits and the overall retail experience. Although AI represents extraordinary opportunities for businesses, companies must avoid the dangers and risks associated with the...

The purpose of this research was to identify the effects of message contents and framings that airline companies communicate with potential airline passengers during the COVID-19 pandemic to enhance behavioral intentions to engage in international air travel. A survey of 1300 respondents was conducted using the Posttest Control Group experimental d...

Purpose This study aims to test a new model by examining the influence of memorable local food consumption experiences (MLFCEs) on international diners’ affective states, well-being and attitudinal loyalty. Local food tasting destination, local food neophobia and previous local food tasting experience are used as moderating variables. Design/metho...

Purpose This research aims to examine the role of perceived threat (i.e. COVID-19) on people’s preferences for destination logo designs. In addition, it investigates the influence of childhood socioeconomic status (SES) and sensation seeking on the aforementioned effect. Design/methodology/approach Five experiments are used. Studies 1 A and 1B exa...

The pandemic outbreak poses one of the most influential threats. When faced with such a threat, consumers engage in adaptive behaviors, and one way to do so may pertain to pattern-seeking in their choices. Across five studies, we show that consumers exhibit patterns in sequential choice under the threat of COVID-19. Specifically, consumers high (vs...

This study investigates the relationship between the COVID-19 threat and consumer evaluation of a product with authenticity appeals in advertisements. We propose that threatening situations like COVID-19 motivate consumers to lower their uncertainty and increase their preference for products with authentic advertising messages. Because individuals...

The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated the ecosystem of tourism businesses. This study aimed to assess the effect of the pandemic on consumers’ intentions to choose sharing economy products and services. A series of five experimental designs was conducted using online panel data. Consumers were found to be less likely to choose sharing economy produc...

Crowding is a critical determinant of consumers' satisfaction with and preferences for different shopping and travel situations. When considering a selection of travel and hospitality options, travelers are influenced by perceived crowding. This research examined how the current health crisis (i.e., the COVID-19 pandemic) affects travelers’ prefere...

This research investigates the effect of mindfulness on pro-environmental hotel preference. The results of six studies demonstrate that both trait mindfulness and temporary states of mindfulness increase tourists' preferences for pro-environmental hotels. Further, we show that the effect of mindfulness on the preference for a pro-environmental hote...

Travelers often demonstrate the compromise effect—a tendency to choose the intermediate option(s) when facing difficult trade-off decisions. The compromise effect has been replicated in very specific settings where typically only two or three options were available. This research extends our understanding of the compromise effect by examining the i...

This article investigates how the perceived threats caused by COVID-19 affect consumers’ travel choices and actions by influencing their intentions to seek variety. Four studies show that the perceived threat of COVID-19 increases variety seeking in travel choices. Study 1 finds that travelers who perceive a greater threat of COVID-19 tend to under...

This article investigates the role of diverse nudging communication strategies on perceived threat and stockpiling intention. Across three studies, the authors examined the various effects of “nudging” on consumer behavior. Study 1 demonstrates that a commonly used picture has a stronger impact on perceived threat than a less frequently exposed pic...

When do consumers trust artificial intelligence (AI)? With the rapid adoption of AI technology in the field of marketing, it is crucial to understand how consumer adoption of the information generated by AI can be improved. This study explores a novel relationship between number presentation details associated with AI and consumers' behavioral and...

The present research investigates a novel relationship between travelers’ childhood socioeconomic status (SES) and travel decision-making. We theorize that travelers from lower childhood SES or resource-scarce/unpredictable environments are more likely to avoid extreme options in a choice set. Five studies consistently show that childhood SES is ne...

This study aims to (1) examine whether a hotel's loyalty program is effective in weakening the desire for retaliation and perceived betrayal of high-tiered members after a double deviation and (2) determine which recovery tactic is more effective in attenuating their desire for retaliation and perceived betrayal. Scenario-based studies were conduct...

Combining conceptual perspectives from emerging research on COVID-19, safety-seeking motivations, and extremeness aversion in choice (i.e., compromise effects), we examine how and why the perceived threat of COVID-19 affects consumers’ choice and decision making in the hotel and restaurant domains. Across seven studies (two studies from secondary d...

The present research investigates how the threat of COVID-19 affects consumers’ choices among hospitality/travel options of varying levels of quality and price. Drawing on compensatory consumption theory, we predicted that the virus’s prominence would increase consumers’ preference for more expensive options in a choice set. Five empirical studies...

This study sought to examine the impacts of the global coronavirus pandemic on hotel employees’ perceptions of occupational stressors and their consequences. Paired t-tests and structural equation modeling were applied to examine the responses of 758 hotel employees in the United States. The findings showed that occupational stressors after the out...

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted peer-to-peer (P2P) accommodation markets. However, how the interplay between tourists and destination attributes has affected P2P accommodation consumption during the pandemic has not been investigated. To address this gap, this study first explored the spatially varying relationship between destination attribute...

When making travel decisions, consumers are frequently exposed to a multitude of options, including differing price levels for the same product or service across a range of online travel agencies. The current research investigates how the magnitude of price dispersion in online pricing can influence travelers’ product evaluations and purchase inten...

This study was designed to empirically test the psychological consequences of concealing (vs. displaying) the prices of hospitality products on perceptions of expensiveness, quality, value, and purchase intention. To achieve this objective, seven hypotheses were proposed and a series of four experimental studies were conducted. It was found that a...

This study was designed to empirically test the psychological consequences of concealing (vs. displaying) the prices of hospitality products on perceptions of expensiveness, quality, value, and purchase intention. To achieve this objective, seven hypotheses were proposed and a series of four experimental studies were conducted. It was found that a...

Robots and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are becoming more prominent in the tourism industry. Nowadays, consumers are faced with multiple options involving both human and robot interactions. A series of experimental studies were implemented. Four experiments demonstrated that consumers had a more positive attitude toward robot-staffed (...

This research used three experimental studies to examine the effect of scarcity information on choosing a hotel room online. The studies also investigated the moderating role of the buyer’s childhood socioeconomic status (SES), using evolutionary perspectives and the life history theory. Our findings revealed that travelers showed a preference for...

This study aims to test the impact of price preciseness on compromise and decoy effects, analyze the different presentation styles of price information (a precise price presentation vs. a rounded one), and investigate the moderating role of individual differences (i.e., lay rationalism) and decision situations (i.e., time pressure) in travel decisi...

Communications that include nudges and framing strategies are ubiquitous in our daily lives. In this paper, we investigate how different nudging strategies during a public health campaign, particularly supplementary information and statistics, influence perceptions of threat and stockpiling intentions, while also considering the role of childhood s...

Sustainability has become an increasing concern for many brands and companies and an increasing number of luxury brands now engage in sustainability practices. The present research examines the factors influencing the effectiveness of embedding sustainability in luxury brands. Specifically, this paper investigates how childhood socioeconomic status...

Prior research in behavioral economics has examined the effects of nudging and the diverse aspects of choice on individuals’ decisions and behavior. Based on this premise, the current research offers a novel and timely view by examining how communication messages in public service advertisements (PSAs) can alter the perception of threat under uncer...

Prior research in behavioral economics has examined the effects of nudging and the diverse aspects of choice on individuals’ decisions and behavior. Based on this premise, the current research offers a novel and timely view by examining how communication messages in public service advertisements (PSAs) can alter the perception of threat under uncer...

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly influenced our daily and social lives as well as our consumption patterns. This paper focuses on the relationship between the COVID-19 threat and variety-seeking. Based on several theories, including reactance theory and terror management theory, we predict that the perceived threat of COVID-19 will increase...

The present research investigates the effect of the perceived threat of the virus on the preference for private dining facilities. Integrating the theories about the psychology of risk with research on preference for private dining, we predict that the prominence of the virus systematically increases preference for private dining. Four studies (N =...

Purpose This paper aims to examine how consumers make choices when they are faced with a fixed set of available options, consisting of both preferred and less-preferred choices, in the domain of food consumption. Specifically, the paper offers a novel perspective to predict repeated choice decisions in food consumption, which is termed as “pattern-...

The issue addressed by this research is when does a decision-maker select his or her intuitive, default, option and when the option suggested by someone else? We introduce the idea that cognitive resource availability is a key to this question. When there are limited cognitive resources available either due to knowledge deficiencies or, perhaps, ti...

The present research establishes that taking photos has a paradoxical dual effect on travelers’ satisfaction and revisit intention. Across five empirical studies, we show that while taking photographs increases travelers’ satisfaction with an experience, it simultaneously decreases travelers’ intention to revisit the same experience. The increased...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of experiences with local food in Ghana on satisfaction, favorability and behavioral intention. Design/methodology/approach Unlike previous studies that have used multiple regression analysis or structural equation modeling, this study adopts impact-range performance analysis (IRPA) a...

Informed by the psychological theory of mindsets, we establish how “fixed” and “growth” mindsets divergently influence luxury travel behaviors. Across three experiments, we found that the relative preference for luxury travel is higher when consumers adopt a fixed rather than growth mindset (studies 1a and 1b). The effect of mindsets is also eviden...

Cultivating pro-environmental choices and behaviors is an important concern for tourism research and practice. Informed by recent developments in psychological research on embodied cognition and the moral effects of physical cleansing, we elicit novel insights about the causal relationship between the embodied experience of physical cleansing and p...

159.99, 159.38 or $160.00? The phenomenon of pricing around a rounded number, with apparent preciseness, is commonly observed in the marketplace. Much research has been conducted in the general area, and has established that the use of precise prices, those without a zero-ending, tends to lead to increased sales and to a more positive customer atti...

This research investigates the impact of different degrees of price dispersion on travelers’ hotel choice. More specifically, within an online travel agency (OTA) context, we examine the effect of wide (vs. narrow) price dispersion on hotel preference. In addition, we suggest two boundary conditions for this effect: salience of external regular pri...

This research examines a contextual trigger, namely, choice architecture, which induces pro-environmental behavior among travelers. In particular, we test whether decision modes (choice vs. rejection) affect travelers’ preference for a sustainable hotel over a less sustainable one, and if yes, how moral hypocrisy mediates the link between decision...

Purpose This paper aims to examine when and how the number of “likes” can exert significant influence on consumer evaluations of social media advertising. It sheds a novel perspective on how social media “likes”, advertising disclosures and the presence of firm-serving motives influence advertising effectiveness. Design/methodology/approach Study...

Kim et al. (2018) raised four issues along with possible remedies that could affect statistical conclusions from mediation analysis. The issues addressed were: omitted mediators, reverse mediation, multi-item measures, and experimental methods. This prompted an insightful response from Thoemmes and Lemmer (2019), who largely agreed upon and further...

The impact of health risk behaviours on the social and economic fabric of society is of concern to social marketers and policy makers. Current research suggests social capital, that is, the positive benefits gained from a relationship with others in the community, plays a key role in addressing health risk behaviours. The current literature on soci...

Informed by recent developments in the field of evolutionary psychology, we elicit novel insights about the causal relationship between the activation of mating motives and gender-specific preferences for risk taking in tourism. In this endeavor, across four experimental studies, we illustrate that the effect of activating mating motives on the pro...

This paper uses stakeholder influence and institutional duality arguments to investigate the influence of stakeholders on foreign subsidiaries' corporate social responsibility (CSR) practice. Voluntarily, or under pressure from various stakeholders in the host country, the foreign subsidiaries engage in CSR activities to maintain and enhance their...

The current research explores consumers’ preferred timing of consuming experiential and material purchases made during their travels and its downstream affective consequence. Previous research showed that people generally show relative preference toward consuming material purchases sooner than experiential purchases. Reversing this finding, we cont...

This research assesses the effects of choice alternatives on the travel destination decisions of travelers. The decoy effect involves the addition of a new inferior alternative into a choice set, thereby increasing the choice of an existing option. Meanwhile, the compromise effect involves the addition of a new alternative into a choice set that in...

Consumers typically make choices based on a menu that lists a variety of food items. Prior research has shown that the position of food items within a menu (center vs. edge) can impact choices (e.g., edge preference and edge aversion). This research extends the literature by demonstrating that the display format of a menu (horizontal vs. vertical d...

Over five experiments, we demonstrate that physical cleansing (e.g., handwashing) can reduce consumers’ unhealthy eating in subsequent unrelated contexts, by decreasing their choice of vice food (e.g., chocolate cake) versus virtue food (e.g., fruit salad) and their preferred amount vice food for consumption. This effect generalizes over different...

Four issues that can affect statistical conclusions from mediation analysis are presented here: The implications of omitting mediators; not conducting reverse mediation analysis; using inappropriate measures; and not considering a wider array of experiment-based methods. Suggestions for addressing each of these are advanced. Previous issues of AMJ,...

This research investigates how temporal distance influences leisure travellers’ assessment of hotel attributes, and further examines whether gender moderates the impact of temporal distance. Two scenario-based experimental studies found that the importance of hotel choice factors considered by people who plan a trip in the near future differed from...

Consumers often find themselves challenged by the conflicting desires to seek uniqueness versus conformity, and thus seek some degree of balance. In a series of six studies we show that presenting each options' product-related information in a unique color, as opposed to all product-related information presented in black-on-white, partially satiate...

This article examines how salient traces left by previous owners on used goods influence product evaluations. Based on the concept of psychological ownership, we propose the ownership distance effect in the context of buying used goods. We argue that when there are salient traces left by previous owners on a used good, it will widen the ownership d...

Using real data acquired from transaction receipts at a cafe, the present research examined individuals’menu choices made in a group setting. Building on previous research, the present research proposed and examined what we call the group referencing effect, and found that individuals’ menu choices were more likely to conform to the precedent menu...

This paper investigates the impact of different price promotion effects regarding two different types of service cost (i.e., a joining fee vs. a monthly fee) on retention intentions for new customers in the long-term service industry. Based on the depreciation curve, mental accounting, and the escalation of commitment theory, we predict that custom...

The current research examines how different types of information representation mode (graphical vs. numerical) influence the compromise effect. We posit that the compromise effect will be relatively stronger in the graphical versus numerical information presentation mode. Four empirical studies reported in this research provide the following: (1) s...

This research investigates whether different ways of framing decisions influence travelers’ variety-seeking tendencies in choosing bundled product options. Based on the literatures of bundling, variety-seeking, and the decision-framing effect, we empirically test whether travelers show higher variety-seeking in travel package decisions when the bun...

Purpose This research aims to examine the moderating role of consumers’ persuasion knowledge (PK) on the persuasive effect of combined advertising and publicity within the same medium. The synergistic effect experienced when two messages are thus combined is reversed for readers with high PK who are first exposed to publicity then to advertising. B...

This research examines the impact of humans' mating motivation on their attitudes toward and recall of advertising that contains words with sexual connotations (e.g., “Sexton Plumbing” and “We Sell Boxes”). Due to gender differences based on evolution-based and socialization-based approaches, this research predicts differential evaluations between...

This article reports the influence of two specific consumption situations—hedonic and utilitarian—on the magnitude of the compromise effect. Based on the literatures of different valuation processes (valuation by calculation vs. valuation by feeling) and hedonic versus utilitarian consumption, the authors suggest that the compromise effect will be...

Effectively promoting products and services is important for the success of tourism companies in the competitive business environment. Based on construal level theory, this study examines whether psychological distance (temporal and spatial) influences preferred promotional messages in the tourism industry. The results from three experimental studi...

Two studies demonstrate that strong brand relationship quality (BRQ) enhances consumer judgments about brand extensions. Different methods (survey vs. experiment), participants (real consumers vs. college students), and cultural contexts (Korea vs. Canada) demonstrate that this effect generalizes. Study results suggest that this effect only occurs...

This paper extends previous research on the framing effect from single-alternative and single-attribute to multi-alternative and multi-attribute situations. Two experimental studies demonstrate that attribute framing and goal framing influence consumer decision-making in multi-attribute and multi-alternative situations. The results indicate that at...

In four experiments, participants made a purchase decision about a counterfeit product under either constrained or unconstrained cognitive resource conditions. Participants were less likely to purchase the counterfeit when their cognitive resources were constrained than when they were not. However, this difference was evident only when individuals...

Trade-in transactions typically involve an exchange of an old, used version for a new or newer version of the product. When consumers trade in their used model for a new model, the firm faces the choice of paying the consumer a relatively low price for the used model and charging a commensurately low price for the new model or paying a relatively h...

The relative preference for a target product over a competitor can be increased by providing a third alternative (a “decoy”) that is clearly inferior to the target but is not necessarily inferior to the competitor. In 3 experiments, we examined the conditions in which these decoy effects occur. When participants reported their preferences immediate...