The rapid growth of social media and livestreaming platforms has transformed influencer marketing, especially with the rise of livestream shopping. While previous research classified influencers by follower count or platform characteristics, there was little focus on the content types of livestreaming influencers. This study proposes a new typology of livestreaming influencers based on content focus: entertainment-focused, information-focused, and social/community-focused. Through content analysis of leading live streamers, this study confirms the distinctiveness of these three types, highlighting how each is influenced by channel, platform, performance style, and product categories. This content-based classification offers a more meaningful way to understand influencer impact, as it closely aligns with user motivations like hedonic, utilitarian, and social connection. The study lays the groundwork for future empirical research on how different influencers affect consumer purchasing behavior during livestream events, contributing to the evolving literature on social live commerce and digital marketing.

Live commerce has emerged as a new form of digital consumption that integrates real-time interaction and technological innovation. The interaction characteristics of live commerce platforms are not limited to consumer-to-consumer exchanges but fundamentally involve dynamic interactions between consumers and the platform’s technological environment. Drawing on affordance theory, this study aims to investigate how the technological affordances of live commerce platforms influence consumers’ psychological responses and purchase intentions. Affordances were classified into explicit affordances (visibility, metavoicing, and shopping guidance) and hidden affordances (product information, live streamer information, and transaction information). This study also examines flow, trust, and swift guanxi, which extends the traditional Chinese concept of guanxi to the digital environment, as key psychological mechanisms through which these affordances influence consumers’ purchase intentions. An online survey was conducted with Chinese users who have experience using live commerce platforms. Data analysis was performed using SPSS 29.0.1.0 for exploratory factor analysis and SmartPLS 4.1.0.8 for hypothesis testing. The empirical results indicate that both explicit and hidden affordances positively influence consumers’ flow, trust, and swift guanxi, which in turn enhance purchase intention. The findings contribute to a deeper understanding of how the technological and relational features of live commerce jointly shape consumer behavior. The study extends affordance theory into the live commerce context and highlights swift guanxi as a critical relational mechanism that bridges technological design and consumer trust. These insights provide valuable theoretical and practical implications for platform developers and marketers seeking to enhance user engagement and promote sustainable purchase behavior.

This study examines user consumption experiences and emotional responses on China-based ultra-low-cost e-commerce platforms, Temu and AliExpress. A total of 48,913 Korean reviews collected from the Google Play Store were analyzed to explore user perceptions and behavioral patterns. Using topic modeling based on text mining, the study identified key consumer perception factors and examined their effects on user satisfaction through ordinary least squares regression analysis. The results indicate that low-cost experiential consumption, value-for-money and impulse buying, cross-border price perception, and delivery speed and accuracy had positive effects on satisfaction, whereas quality trust and misleading advertising, privacy and data security concerns, and perceptions and reactions to promotions exerted negative influences. Among these, perceptions and reactions to promotions had the most significant negative impact, suggesting that repetitive promotional structures may undermine consumer trust. Additionally, several users exhibited temporary and repetitive purchasing and disposal behaviors, reflecting a tendency toward emotional immersion and instant gratification beyond rational consumption. Overall, this study conceptualizes ultra-low-cost platforms not merely as price-competitive marketplaces but as emotional consumption ecosystems, emphasizing the need for sustainable operational strategies grounded in trust, transparency, and responsibility.

Chinese cross-border e-commerce platforms exemplified by AliExpress and Temu have recently exhibited rapid growth in the Korean market. This study undertakes a longitudinal analysis of trends in Korean media coverage to trace shifts in salient social issues over time. Drawing on domestic news articles, we categorized reports into four stages of discourse emergence, introduction, diffusion, and stabilization and applied keyword frequency analysis and topic modeling. The findings show that the volume of coverage rose in 2023 and surged in 2024, while media frames expanded from IT/science to economic concerns and, subsequently, to social and policy issues. Stage-specific shifts in high-salience keywords corroborate changes in media attention across periods. Topic modeling revealed additional themes including market competition, consumer responses, and institutional challenges signaling a shift from early coverage centered on trends in China’s e-commerce market (emergence, introduction) to later emphasis on domestic market impacts, consumer harm cases, and the need for government regulation (diffusion, stabilization). Building on these results, we propose implications for key stakeholders, including domestic firms and consumers, policymakers, and the academic community. While the study offers a timely perspective on the media framing of emerging e-commerce trends, it also underscores the value of follow-up research employing broader data and analytic methods.

This study investigates how habit, PSI, and advertising disclosure influence product attitude in the context of Korean YouTube mukbang content, focusing on Chinese college students. Drawing on media habit theory, parasocial interaction theory, and the persuasion knowledge model, a structural research model was proposed to test the mediating roles of immersion and content attitude. Survey data were collected from Chinese university students who frequently watch Korean mukbang channels on YouTube. The results show that habit significantly enhances both immersion and content attitude, which in turn positively influence product attitude. Parasocial interaction also had a significant positive effect on immersion, indicating that viewers’ perceived intimacy and connection with mukbang hosts increase their immersive engagement with the content. Furthermore, immersion directly influenced both content attitude and product attitude, while content attitude also positively affected product attitude. Advertising disclosure exerted a significant positive impact on content attitude, suggesting that transparent sponsorship labeling strengthens viewers’ trust and evaluation of mukbang content. These findings contribute to cross-cultural media and advertising research by demonstrating the influential role of parasocial interaction in enhancing immersion within Korean mukbang content. Practically, the results suggest that marketers and content creators should foster habitual engagement and parasocial connection with audiences, ensure transparent advertising disclosure, and enhance immersive viewing experiences to promote favorable product attitudes among international viewers.

With the growing application of virtual reality (VR) in cultural and performing arts, enhancing audience immersion and engagement has become a key issue in media experience and consumer behavior research. Drawing on the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) framework, this study proposes a dual-perception model incorporating Social Presence and Telepresence to examine their influence on VR performance evaluation, memorable experience, and customer engagement. Using data from 258 Chinese Generation MZ users who have experienced VR performances, structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was employed for analysis. Results indicate that Social Presence significantly enhances Telepresence, performance evaluation, and memorable experience. Telepresence, in turn, promotes both cognitive and emotional engagement, thereby increasing customer engagement. Furthermore, performance evaluation and memorable experience serve as key mediators between perceived stimuli and behavioral responses. This study contributes to the understanding of presence and customer engagement in immersive media and offers practical insights for optimizing VR performance design and audience interaction.

This study empirically examines the impact of perceived violent crime risk on online shopping behavior. Using data from the Seoul Survey (2020-2022) and applying a Two-way Fixed Effects Model, the findings indicate that individuals who perceive a higher risk of violent crime are more likely to prefer online shopping. This effect varies by income level, with high-income groups exhibiting a stronger tendency to shift toward online consumption in response to crime perception. These findings contribute to understanding the evolving landscape of consumer behavior in the digital era and provide critical policy implications for crime prevention and public safety strategies.

This study aimed to identify whether the relationship between the characteristics of SNS marketing and the intention to purchase digital products among Generation Z varies according to users' nationalities. To this end, responses from 298 surveys (172 from Korea, 126 from Vietnam) were used for statistical analysis, and the results are as follows. Firstly, among the characteristics of SNS marketing, playability and reliability were found to have relatively high impacts on purchase intention in a statistically significant manner. Secondly, in the relationship between SNS marketing characteristics and purchase intention, it was observed that nationality serves as a statistically significant moderating effect for playability. Vietnamese Generation Z values self-expression and emotional connection through SNS, while Korean Generation Z tends to use SNS for information searching and practical consumption. Hence, the informational and reliable aspects have a greater influence on purchase intention, suggesting that the relationship between SNS marketing characteristics and purchase intention may differ by culture.

This study investigates the issue of non-surrender of driver’s licenses among older adults in Korea, framing it not merely as a matter of traffic safety but as a complex social phenomenon intertwined with mobility, autonomy, and quality of life. To explore the underlying discourse, we conducted text-mining analyses on Korean-language sources, including news articles (1990 2024), news-article comments (2005 2024), and YouTube comments (2015 2024), applying TF-IDF weighting and co-occurrence network analysis. The temporal analysis revealed a gradual evolution of discourse: from accident-prevention narratives in the 1990s, to everyday safety and policy introduction in the 2000s, to social conflict over voluntary license surrender in the 2010s, and finally to policy evaluation and structural responsibility debates (vehicle, road, and testing systems) in the 2020s. Integrating the co-occurrence findings, we identified four major categories underlying older drivers’ non-surrender behaviors:(1) maintenance of autonomy and identity, (2) needs related to livelihood and mobility, (3) institutional distrust and insufficient benefits, and (4) demands for fair attribution of responsibility to technological and environmental factors. These findings suggest that age-based or one-size-fits-all regulations are insufficient. Instead, multi-layered policy approaches are needed combining psychological and social considerations, institutional trust-building, locally tailored mobility alternatives with meaningful incentives, and the establishment of fair responsibility structures. Limitations include potential expression bias in online texts, interpretive constraints due to the five-year segmentation of data, and data sparsity in the 1990s leading to higher variability in indicators. Nevertheless, this study provides empirical evidence of the long-term evolution and structural dimensions of the elderly driving discourse, offering both theoretical and policy implications for creating more inclusive and balanced mobility governance in aging societies.

This study investigates the structural differences in the relationships between coffee shop selection attributes and behavioral intentions according to coffee involvement (high vs. low). Five key selection attributes employee service, customer benefits, service consistency, physical environment, and coffee quality were analyzed to examine how their relative effects on behavioral intentions differ across levels of coffee involvement. The Likelihood Ratio Test (LRT) was employed to verify the moderating effect of coffee involvement by comparing the model fit between high- and low-involvement groups. The results revealed that highly involved consumers emphasized employee service, customer benefits, and service consistency, whereas low-involvement consumers were more influenced by employee service and the physical environment. Although coffee quality was theoretically important, it did not show statistical significance as an independent factor. These findings demonstrate that coffee involvement serves as a critical moderating variable shaping the relationship between selection attributes and behavioral intentions. Theoretically, this study contributes to expanding the understanding of structural differences in consumer decision-making, while practically providing implications for differentiated marketing strategies tailored to the level of coffee involvement.