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Confucian philosophy emphasizes gender roles that place significant restrictions on the consumption of non-traditional products. The authors use wine to advance our understanding of how South Korean female consumers have established a new female gender role and identity by adopting new communities that allow non-traditional consumption while still accepting gender roles. This paper aims to examine how South Korean female consumers create a unique consumption culture with respect to wine consumption.

A hermeneutic approach was adopted to understand what motivates South Korean female consumers to join a wine consumption community and their perceptions about consuming wine. Researchers conducted 26 semi-structured face-to-face interviews that ranged from 45 to 120 min, with an average duration of 1 h.

The results of the study suggest that wine can be a medium for emancipating women from traditional gender roles and social images of women embedded in South Korean society that call for women to sacrifice themselves for their families. In addition, the study’s findings suggest that Western wine marketers need to understand the power of wine consumption communities that are a unique consumption ritual among South Korean female wine consumers.

South Korean female respondents drink wine as both a way to seek pleasure through a Western alcoholic beverage and to consume and experience Western culture and lifestyles. However, South Korean female respondents tend to drink wine within consumption communities, which are a powerful consumption ritual in South Korea. In other words, although South Korean female respondents consume wine to experience and learn about Western culture and lifestyles, they have entirely not abandoned their traditional consumption rituals.

The purposes of the study were to classify South Korean female apparel shoppers into fashion opinion leadership groups and to develop group profdes by lifestyle characteristics, store selection attributes, clothing purchase influences, and sociodemographics. Data (N=271) were collected by questionnaires distributed to 300 South Korean consumers chosen to participate in the investigation. By cluster analysis of the Fashion Opinion Leadership (FOL) scale, four female consumer groups were identified as traditionoriented/culture conscious (29.4 per cent), eco‐nomic‐oriented/price conscious (15.8 per cent), convenience‐oriented/time conscious (28.7 per cent), and appearance‐oriented/fashion conscious (26.1 per cent). Scale reliability with the inter‐national sample was determined by a Cronbach alpha. Groups were compared on the profile descriptors through MANOVA and chisquare statistics. Results indicated that fashion opinion leadership is a base for segmenting South Korean female apparel shoppers. This study suggests ways knowledge about the consumer groups identified can be incorporated into marketing and retail strategies.

Despite the growing popularity of online secondhand platforms globally, there is a lack of studies exploring how consumers worldwide perceive contamination and the use of secondhand goods differently according to the culture. Based on the consumer contamination theory, this study aims to investigate the cultural differences of South Koreans and Americans by examining three variables (e.g. transaction type, ownership duration and physical attractiveness) related to consumers' perception of contamination and purchase intentions for a secondhand apparel item.

Data were collected from 422 US and South Korean female consumers who were assigned to an experimental scenario, and their secondhand purchase intentions and perceived contamination were compared through independent t-tests and moderated regression analyses.

Consumers' purchase intentions increased, and perceived contamination decreased when the transaction type was business-to-consumer (vs consumer-to-consumer), when the item had been owned for a shorter period of time and when the item was sold by an attractive seller. Such effect was more pronounced for South Korean consumers than the US consumers in the negative contamination contexts (i.e. transaction type, ownership duration), but not in the positive contamination context (i.e. attractiveness).

The findings of the study add to the literature on consumer contamination theory through an examination of several negative and positive contamination factors in retail contexts and highlight the role of culture as a critical moderator.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the antecedents of actual purchase behavior vs satisfaction at the point of purchase and the antecedents of actual unplanned vs planned purchase behavior.

By using both survey and actual purchase data from a total of 3,300 shoppers of a Korean fast fashion brand, the multivariate regression analysis and two separate logistic regression analyses were compared to respond to the research questions.

The noticeable point of the findings is that the factors influencing the level of satisfaction and the probability to purchase were different. As common factors for both actual purchase and satisfaction, value for money, and affordable price are the first things that the practitioners have to keep in mind when developing a strategy for fast fashion stores. However, unplanned shoppers, who are over half of buyers, are negatively influenced by the affordable prices in their buying decisions.

The results of this study have implications for the retailers, especially those selling fast fashion products in South Korea.

The current study has merit because of its use of secondary data collected by a large marketing research company on Korean domestic fast fashion brand. In particular, the combination of the large sample survey data collected right after shopping and the actual receipt of purchase has its unique value.

This study attempts to evaluate the antecedences of customer loyalty and the moderating effect of social media. Three antecedences are evaluated in this study, including service quality expectation, product innovation, and customer relationship management. It investigates their impact on the dependent variable, which is customer loyalty and also study their relationships in the presence of the mediating effect of customer satisfaction and moderating effects of social media. The present study was conducted in the hospitality sector of Pakistan, in which eight hotels and restaurants have been studied. The sample was collected from three major cities of Pakistan, namely, Multan, Faisalabad, and Lahore. This present study provides essential intuition for managers and market analysts on building strong customer relationship management through social media and to increase customer loyalty through different factors.

The purpose of this study is to measure and compare the consumer‐based brand equity of apparel products by three consumer groups across cultures – Americans in the USA, South Koreans in the USA, and South Koreans in Korea. Also examined was cross‐cultural effects of brand equity on purchase intention.

A total of 300 college students were recruited for the survey from local universities and organizations in the USA and South Korea. The MBE and OBE models were used to measure brand equity of the three apparel brands (i.e. Polo, Gap, and Levi's).

Among the elements of brand equity, the perceived brand quality and brand awareness/association reported by American college students were significantly greater than those reported by South Koreans in the USA and Korea. For both South Korean groups, brand loyalty was the most important element of brand equity. In the relationship between elements of brand equity and purchase intention, brand loyalty showed positive correlation with purchase intention across all three consumer groups.

Further research might include more apparel brands in different price points. An investigation of the prices of various apparel brands in different countries will be useful for cross‐cultural comparisons.

With a lack of brand equity studies on fashion products and even fewer studies of cross‐cultural comparisons in brand equity, this study should be valuable information for firms branding their products and making marketing strategies from the global perspective.

This study examined the relationship of consumer values, needs and purchase behavior in two Asian consumer markets, China and South Korea. Between self‐directed values and social affiliation values, self‐directed values were the underlying determinant of needs to be satisfied by apparel products. Among the three types of needs identified to be satisfied through apparel (i.e. experiential, social and functional needs), experiential needs were the most important needs that influenced apparel purchases of female consumers in both Asian markets. Consumers in both country markets exhibited brand loyal behavior in apparel purchases, fulfilling all three needs. However, actualization patterns of each need through brand loyal behavior differed between the two consumer samples. While for brand‐loyal Chinese consumers experiential image was the most important aspect of the branded apparel appeal to female consumers, social image with performance quality assurance was a more important feature of the branded apparel appeal to consumers in Korea. Implications for brand image management for international markets were discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to outline a framework for marketing cultural goods (e.g. music) to global markets by examining modes of entry and positioning strategies used by media producers of the South Korean music industry.

An historic analysis was implemented to investigate the modalities and structures through which cultural products are produced and disseminated. Data for this study came from 314 articles collected from www.allkpop.com, a leading English-language, South Korean popular culture news site.

The cultural technology framework consists of the institutionalization of cultural technology, exportation of cultural content, collaborations with local talent, and joint ventures with local markets.

The findings emerge from an analysis of South Korean popular music industries, and further research is needed to generalize the results across cultural industries.

The cultural technology framework can be applied to cultural industries such as music, film, comics, and art, where culture and language could be barriers to adoption.

This study outlines a framework for the modes of entry and positioning strategies of cultural goods (e.g. music) in international markets. Extant literature has examined global marketing from the purview of durable consumer goods and brands, with limited insights into cultural products. More broadly, this paper addresses the call for more qualitative inquiry into international marketing topics.

This study aims to examine how variations in the perceived gender (a)typicality of front-line staff impact on consumer spending. Gender typicality is defined here as traditionally masculine-looking men and feminine-looking women, whereas gender atypicality, in contrast, refers to feminine-looking men and masculine-looking women.

Using an experimental design, the authors use simulated consumption scenarios across two separate studies, one in the USA and the other in South Korea. In each study, the authors investigate main and interaction effects in relation to front-line employees’ race (white vis-à-vis Asian) and baseline gender (originally male vis-à-vis originally female).

Across the two studies, consumers spent more money with gender-typical female front-line staff or, alternatively stated, less money with more masculine-looking female front-line staff. The effect of the male service staff was more complicated. In both countries, the authors found a significant consumer preference for gender-atypical (i.e. more feminine-looking), Asian male employees, compared to more masculine-looking Asian men.

The experimental design strengthens claims of not only good internal validity but also weakens the generalizability of the findings. Field research is needed to explore these effects in various workplaces and sectors. The authors also acknowledge the limitations of operationalizing the gender (a)typicality of front-line staff by manipulating facial structures. Future research should manipulate gender (a)typicality using sociological and performative indicators.

The authors contribute to ongoing debates surrounding the legality and ethics of regulating employee appearance in the workplace. Employers must consider whether this type of “lookism” is legally and morally defensible.

This is, to the knowledge, the first-ever study to examine the effect of front-line employee gender non-conformity on consumer behavior and decision-making. The authors show how variations in perceived gender (a)typicality can, variously, promote or retard consumer spending. The study is original in that it shifts the debate from traditional studies of between-gender differences to a focus on within-gender differences. The key value of the research is that it shines a much-needed light on the changing role of gender in the workplace.

The purpose of this study is to investigate cross cultural differences in the impact of online retailer reputation and retail quality on consumers' emotional and cognitive (i.e. perceived risk) reactions, which lead to purchase intention, based on stimulus‐organism‐response (S‐O‐R) model.

Two cultures, US (individualism, low uncertainty avoidance) and South Korea (collectivism, high uncertainty avoidance) were chosen for comparison for their contrast in cultural characteristics. Multiple group analysis in structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed in order to compare the structural model in two different cultures.

The results indicate that while the overall mechanism underlying the decision making process is similar for the two countries, differences are found in the relative importance of the factors determining consumers' cognitive and emotional reactions as well as their intention to purchase online.

The majority of the respondents were female and their evaluation was mostly towards online apparel websites. It did not bias the result of this study as the two sample sets were comparable in their demographics and online shopping behavior, yet the result may be generalized to a limited extent.

The results suggest that retailing strategy may vary in response to cultural differences. In East Asian countries that share Confucian values, targeting consumer emotion through experiential cues may not yield as significant result as it may in the USA.

This study will add value to the current literature by examining the cultural difference in consumer psychological process and its consequent effect on purchase intention focusing on reputation as key external stimuli.