Wi-Suk Kwon

Auburn University | AU · Department of Consumer and Design Sciences

Purpose When retail businesses, especially small businesses with greater vulnerability, could not meet consumers in person during the recent pandemic crisis, how did they adapt to the situation? This study examined how small business practitioners (SBPs’) perceptions, trust and adoption intention levels for social media, as well as the relationship...

Purpose This study aims to explore how brands use brand personification techniques in real-time marketing on social media, particularly Twitter, and examine how these techniques impact consumer engagement, moderated by brand-event congruence levels. Design/methodology/approach Data included 464 tweets posted by 95 brands around three large events...

Many older users find it challenging to use Medicare Plan Finder (MPF), an interactive online decision support tool for Medicare plan selections without assistance due to the diversity of plan options and their low internet competency. This study implements an artificially intelligent decision assistant (AIDA) to support older users’ Medicare Part...

Aging limits the capacity of one’s working memory. Hence, in decision contexts where especially older people have to evaluate too many alternatives put a cognitive load on them, which impairs their decision-making process and their trust in their decisions. This study examined the effects of intelligent decision assistants on the perceived social s...

Purpose Based on cue utilization theory, this study aims to examine effects of the style (fashion vs basic) and licensing status (licensed vs nonlicensed) of university-related apparel products (URAPs) as intrinsic and extrinsic cues, respectively, impacting university fans’ responses (i.e. attitudes, purchase intentions and purchase behaviors) and...

This study examines how consumers’ motivations influence their love for a brand’s Facebook page and brand loyalty. The role that consumers’ opinion leadership and opinion seeking traits play in driving these motivations was also examined. Results from an online survey with 260 college students revealed that consumers’ self-presentation and self-exp...

COVID-19 put unprecedented external pressure on small businesses to adopt or increase use of social media while not all small businesses are internally ready for this rapid change. This study investigated the roles of external pressures and organizational culture of openness and learning in driving small retail business owners'/managers' social med...

Medicare Plan Finder (MPF), an e-healthcare tool on Medicare.gov, is designed to support beneficiaries in selecting a Medicare plan. The large number of plans and complexity of plan attributes make decisions arduous for older adults, whose decisions can suffer from cognitive aging. No studies have explored the optimization of older adults’ decision...

The Medicare Plan Finder (MPF), a decision support tool on Medicare.gov, provides functions to help older users simplify their plan selection, but many users may be unaware of MPF functions, cannot locate them, or do not have desire to use them voluntarily. Existing literature offers little knowledge on older adults’ utilization of MPF functionalit...

Purpose This study aims at examining the role of the e-store brand personality congruence/incongruence of a multichannel apparel retailer in the formation of consumers' perceived e-store brand fit and e-store patronage intention, based on the concept of image congruence. Design/methodology/approach An online survey was conducted with a US national...

Although corporate social responsibility (CSR) appears to be mutually beneficial for companies and consumers, the modern marketplace has left both parties in vulnerable positions. Consumers are increasingly subjected to incongruent CSR messages such as greenwashing, while companies are trapped in a strategic positioning dilemma with regard to how t...

BACKGROUND: Because Medicare plan coverage and costs change annually and older adults, the major beneficiaries of Medicare, are faced with multiple health conditions and changing medical needs, Medicare beneficiaries should evaluate their options during open enrollment every year. However, because of the complexity of plan selection, it may be chal...

Purpose: To measure hospital visitors' satisfaction with a rooftop atrium and its resultant impact on the visitors' behavioral intentions toward the healing garden, the hospital, and overall satisfaction with the hospital. Background: There is a significant lack of empirical research that links the emotional and behavioral responses toward heali...

This study examines the influences of boycott issue importance, others’ boycott participation (i.e., the number of ‘likes’ on the brand boycott Facebook page), and scope for self-enhancement on consumers’ intentions to participate in brand boycotts on Facebook. Results of an online experiment revealed that others’ participation and boycott issue im...

When making routine and critical purchase decisions, consumers often have a need to process a surplus of information to make the right choice. Today’s technology must be able to assist them in this process. Although conversational voice user interfaces have the potential to help consumers in their decision-making, extensive testing is required to e...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine how the sentiment of social networking site (SNS)-based brand-related electronic word-of-mouths (eWOMs) influences consumers’ engagement in brand value co-creation and brand trust change, thereby influencing their purchase intention for the brand; and explores a potential moderating effect of mavenism...

Conversational Voice User Interfaces (VUIs) help us in performing tasks in a wide range of domains these days. While there have been several efforts around designing dialogue systems and conversation flows, little information is available about technical concepts to extract critical information for addressing the users’ needs. For conversational VU...

Natural language-based aids (e.g., intelligent cognitive assistants) that assist humans with various tasks and decisions, often need to recognize the user’s propensity (low-high) to elaborate on the task or decision, to ensure that the information provided matches the user’s thinking level. We conducted two qualitative studies of natural language u...

Not much literature comprehensively addressed risks about WD usage, partly due to the lack of good measurements. To address this literature gap, this study used a content analysis approach to explore risks that consumers perceive about WDs as the initial step to develop a measurement.

Very limited research addresses cultural change and consumer decisions in key emerging markets experiencing proliferation of Western brands and retail formats. This study fills the gap in the literature by investigating the role of need for distinctiveness and Western acculturation in shifting value perceptions of Western brands and Western retail...

This study investigates whether social- versus task-oriented interaction of virtual shopping assistants differentially benefits low versus high Internet competency older consumers with respect to social (perceived interactivity, trust), cognitive (perceived information load), functional (self-efficacy, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness),...

Based on the Human-Elaboration-Object-Construal (HEOC) Contingency Model, we propose design principles for modeling conversational flows between consumers and an in-store mobile decision aid (MoDA) with artificial intelligence, functioning as a virtual sales associate. Through an on-going assessment of the quantity, type, and specificity of the dec...

This study examines two aspects of BGC strategies, appeal (functional vs. emotional) and focus (brand vs. product), and three aspects of user-generated content (UGC), engagement ratio, relevance, and sentiment; uses content analysis.

Given the unprecedented power of social media, more firms are integrating social media into their business strategies. A clear understanding of big data from social media and their linkages to business decisions is critical for today's business viability, sustainability, and growth. However, small businesses' lack of financial and human resources h...

Consumer buying motivations can be distinguished into three categories: functional, experiential, or symbolic motivations (Keller, 1993). Although prior neuroimaging studies have examined the neural substrates which enable these motivations, direct comparisons between these three types of consumer motivations have yet to be made. In the current stu...

People make mundane and critical consumption decisions every day using choice processes that are inherently constructive in nature, where preferences emerge ‘on the spot’ or ‘on the go’ using multiple strategies based on the task at hand (Bettman, Luce, & Payne, 1998; Sproule & Archer, 2000). This implies that applying a single, invariant algorithm...

The purpose of this study is to examine the difference between perceived challenges measured before and after shopping online for fashion products and their effects in leading to flow. An online survey including an online shopping task was conducted with a national sample of 500 adult consumers recruited in the U.S.A. The paired t-test results show...

This study examined the relationships between consumers' skill, perceived challenge, online flow, brand experience, and brand loyalty in the context of online shopping on an apparel brand's website. Data were collected using an online survey with a national sample of 400 female adults (age 20-34). Respondents were asked to perform an online browsin...

Uncovering what drives the consumer to action is of interest to academia and industry alike, and the advent of social media has added a confounding layer to the consumer decision process. In some ways, it has changed nothing, and in other ways, it has changed everything. Information is at the heart of decision making, and blogs offer a plethora. A...

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the visual presence of a virtual agent on a retail Web site reveals positive outcomes for older users with respect to enhancing perceived interactivity, social support, trust and patronage intentions and alleviating user anxiety. Design/methodology/approach – A between-subjects laborato...

A cause–brand alliance is a type of cause‐related marketing campaign in which the brand supports a cause in response to a consumer purchasing a product associated with the brand. Using the meaning transfer, attribution, and schema theories, the researchers developed a model and hypotheses addressing structural relationships among key antecedents of...

Under increasing pressure from consumers to be socially responsible, more brands than ever are engaging in cause–brand alliances. Two challenges facing brands are how to choose a nonprofit partner for the alliance and the impact of the brand's perceived motivations for engaging in the alliance on consumers’ responses to the alliance. Using a theore...

The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of online shopping experience on perception of specific types of risks associated with online shopping and how each type of risk perceptions influences online purchase intentions. A conceptual model was proposed to illustrate the relationships between online shopping experience and perceptions o...

This study investigates the benefits of simulated social interaction (social presence) through virtual agents for older users’ experience in retail Web sites, particularly with respect to age-related barriers to the adoption of online retailing. In Study 1, through four focus group interviews, we identified six social–psychological barriers to the...

This study examines the impact of locus of control in conversational agent design on the interaction experience of 61 older users (65+ years old) through a laboratory experiment. Results reveal that for older users, agent control facilitates greater interactivity and social presence than user control.

This study examines whether social presence through a virtual sales associate (VSA) affects mature consumers' perceptions of technical and social supports from an apparel retail website and whether these perceptions influence consumers' attitudes and patronage intentions toward the website. Sixty mature consumers participated in a laboratory experi...

Based on the schema and attribution theories, this study examined hypotheses addressing the effects of cause-brand fit and campaign new source on consumers' attitudes toward a cause-brand alliance by modifying consumers' perceptions of the brand's motivation to engage in the alliance. An online experiment was conducted with a national sample of 742...

Purchase intentions for apparel products often require physical examination prior to purchase. Hence, greater risk is associated with shopping online for apparel products, making it important to examine factors that reduce various risks influencing online purchase intentions. This study examines and compares the impact of two of the most important...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is two‐fold: to investigate virtual agent representational characteristics (modality, interaction style, animation, realism, embodiment, and gender) employed by agent software providers in developing commercial and non‐commercial web sites; and to examine older consumers' preferences in these agent characteristics....

Using a qualitative study employing a role-playing approach with human agents, this study identifies the potential roles of conversational agents in enhancing older users’ computer interactions on the Internet in e-commerce environments. Twenty-five participants aged 65 or older performed a given shopping task with a human agent playing the role of...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore brand association dimensions important to consumers of US specialty apparel brands targeting young women and develop a valid and reliable brand association scale for assessing and monitoring consumers' associations about brands in this market. Design/methodology/approach This study uses mixed methods...

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate mature consumers' perceived risks and benefits and purchase intentions in the context of online apparel shopping and the role of age and past experience in their perceptions and intentions. Design/methodology/approach A national sample of 293 US male and female mature consumers (born in or before...

Four phases of research were conducted to explore female college consumers’ apparel brand knowledge using students from a Southeastern university. First, results from a survey revealed a positive correlation between apparel brands’ recall and recognition performances (Phase 1). In Phase 2, through a brand-sorting task, four major apparel brand cate...

Two experiments were conducted to disentangle reciprocal relationships between multichannel retailers’ offline and online brand images. Results support the cross-channel effect of prior offline brand image on online brand beliefs (biased assimilation) and that of online performance on offline brand beliefs (impact). Consumers’ online and offline br...

This study investigates the effect of the interplay between a multi-channel retailer's offline and online brand images on consumers' online perceived risk and online loyalty within the framework of a theory of cognitive dissonance. A sample of 671 female college students participated in an experiment using a 2 (prior offline brand image) × 2 (onlin...

Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine visual merchandising (VMD) elements of apparel retail web sites, to describe the state of apparel online VMD and to develop a taxonomy of online VMD cues whose effects can be studied empirically. Design/methodology/approach A total of 50 US and 50 Korean web sites were content analyzed in terms of e...

Social interactions can affect one's self-image and are also influenced by self-image. This reciprocal relationship may be found in retail service encounters through the interaction between customers and salespeople. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine relationships among consumers' psychological and physical self-image, perceptions...