Cosmetic market has evolved and becomes a fashion trend in this abundance of material modern society. It is a smooth transition from ¡§for woman¡¨ in the old-fashioned society to today¡¦s new breed ¡§for man¡¨ outburst. It is also the revolution from the ¡§external care products¡¨ to ¡§internal care products.¡¨ The marketing channel has even involved into multi-diversified channels to reach the variety of consumers. As the result, the current global ¡§in-take¡¨ cosmetic market has reached to 46.7 billion USD. Under the advocate of this new concept, Taiwan¡¦s food market is also growing quietly and steadily. When a consumer is considering a cosmetic product in this rapid changing market, their buying desire often depends on their knowledge of the product¡¦s value through self-recognition. This dissertation will conduct a detail examination on the consumers¡¦ cognitions, affect and conation regarding the different channels of the product information source. From this study¡¦s objects in the ¡§drinkable cosmetic¡¨ market, we can concentrate on: 1.Consumers who possess the direct experience with the drinkable cosmetic has a significant affect than those who do not possess the same experience. 2.In comparison with advertisement affect, the consumers who had direct experience has had a greater impression regarding the product. 3.The cross functional between ¡§direct experience¡¨ and ¡§product involvement¡¨ does not consist affect on the studied result. Therefore, despite the different levels of product involveness from the consumers, it will not affect their direct experience nor advertisement affect. It will also not affect the consumers¡¦ buying desire. This research is focusing on the cosmetic market¡¦s new concept on care product, which is the drinking product. Even though the study is concentrating on this later developed market, there are still many aspects of the research that can be further discussed.

The Mobile media has flourished more and more recently. In terms of NCC (National Communications Commission) statistics, the mobile phone penetration had been more than 100% in Taiwan in 2008. In addition, the proportion of Mobile phone revenue was the highest part of telecommunication services in 2008. The marketing pattern developed from both of the highest revenue of Mobile phone business, ¡§Voice Service and Short Message Service (SMS)¡¨, telemarketing and SMS advertisement are the most significant. Therefore, it is definitely a useful study for advertiser who wants to compare both of the most important marketing tools, and which one is suitable for which product¡¦s marketing, additionally, the purpose of understanding the consumer¡¦s attitude and behavior intension. According to research methodology, this study has employed questionnaire survey technique. It had surveyed the consumers who have had received telemarketing and text-message advertisement, and for understanding the differentia of attitude and behavior intension when consumers face both of the marketing tools on different products. There are totally 300 valuable questionnaires. Make time from 18 April to 9 May in 2010. According to the findings of the study, to sell high-involvement with rational products, the telemarketing is better. And the object of the students, the military and housewife will likely purchase are more than people who serve as commercial and manufacturing. If advertiser wants to sell high-involvement with perceptual products, both telemarketing and SMS advertisement are useful. If advertiser wants to sell low-involvement with rational products, the telemarketing is easier to succeed. Furthermore, we can pay attention on that the attitudes and behavior intentions of female that are definitely better than male, and people with low educational level whose attitudes and behavior intentions are better than with high educational level, and low income people whose behavior intentions are better than high income people. If advertiser wants to sell low-involvement with perceptual products, the SMS advertisement is much better. In summary, it is important to mention that: People serve as the "services" whose attitudes and behavior intensions are ¡§low¡¨, and serve as "housewife", "military", "manufacturing" and "students" are ¡§high¡¨.

There are hundreds of channels in Taiwan. Because of computer and internet developing, people in Taiwan communicate easily to everyone in the world. It causes conflicts and challenges such as economy, business, and culture. The main source of profits in channels and web is advertising. According to AC Nielsen in Taiwan, Advertising industry in Taiwan outputs $40 billion in 2007, and its growing can figure out in future. So this study is to discuss the influence of Advertising Effectiveness in Product Involvement and Purchase Intention. This study set to sampling 18-40 years old. It includes male and female. The methods of this study are such as Descriptive Statistics, Multiple Regression, and ANOVA. The Advertising Effectiveness is the moderator in this study. To discuss the issues of the moderator model explains the effect of strength and direction of Purchase Intention. The hypotheses of this study are presented as follows: 1.Product Involvement has statistically influence on Purchase Intention. 2.Advertising Effectiveness has statistically influence on Purchase Intention. 3.The interaction of Product Involvement and Advertising Effectiveness as statistically influence. The conclusions are presented as all hypotheses to show: 1.On Purchase Intention, the Product Involvement will influence consumers¡¦ purchase decision. 2.Advertising also influence consumers¡¦ purchase decision. 3.The effect of the interaction explains synergy from Product Involvement and Advertising Effectiveness to consumers.

Firms constantly try their best to build up added value for products or services in order to raise their profitability in the wave of the global economy in 21th century. Originally, brands are simply used to distinguish the sellers of products or services, but once brand contacts with consumers, the interaction between firms marketing strategy and consumers¡¦ response begins. Hence the unique brand attributes and differentiation are developed based on product and brand positioning. The uniqueness and differentiation of brand attributes can attract consumers¡¦ recognition of brand, and it will gradually accumulate to become consumer based brand equity. Smartphone product knowledge is widely open and only one click away from consumers on internet, thus product involvement is gradually getting high. Moreover, the market is flooded with similar products since fierce industrial competition environment. For this reason, consumers¡¦ complex decision-making process among the numerous varieties of products interests me. After relevant literature review, the influence on brand equity, product involvement, perceived risk on smartphone is chosen to be the subject, in order to understand consumers¡¦ perceptions of brand recognition of smartphone. The study employs questionnaires with anonymous and convenience sampling. Total distribution of questionnaires was 347pcs, 342 were received, after deduction of invalid 37pcs, the valid questionnaires reached a total of 305. The empirical study conclusions are: 1. Brand equity affects consumers¡¦ perceived level of product involvement. High brand equity will bring out consumers¡¦ attention and importance of product. 2. Brand equity has direct influence on purchase intention. The objectives of this study are easily influenced by the constructs-perceived quality, brand awareness and different attributes-of brand equity when the decision-making process occurs. 3. Perceived risk does not have mediating effects among brand equity, product involvement and purchase intention. Consumers have no expectation of risk or uncertainty that would cause any loss of smartphone purchase behavior. 4. Product involvement is the mediating variable of brand equity and purchase intention. Strong brand equity can effectively seduce consumers¡¦ needs and interests and go a step further to raise their purchase intention indirectly. Key words: brand equity, product involvement, perceived risk, purchase intention and smartphone.

There is no denying that consumer electronics has a great influence on our daily life, and it now also even create and lead trend in modern society. Traditionally, we think of men as the major customer in consumer electronics, but with fashion and social trend are both been added in the concept of the product, many research has shown that women has gradually become the main customer in consumer electronics. Among all the consumer electronic product, smartphone has became the fastest growing product, and the marketshare has already exceeded cell phone since last year. As for the digital camera, there still are promising growing in DSLR-like¡BDSLR and EVIL, and the trend in market this year is to add Wi-Fi as the new function to against smartphone. From literature review, we can found that there are many research about product involvement on buying decision, but fashion involvement is seldom being considered in it. Therefore, we used product involvement and fashion involvement as moderating variable and the research outcome indicate that the intension of buying are easilier stimulated by product function when people has high product involvement in smart phone/digital camera, and they also value public praise of product more. As for people has high fashion involvement, they tends to buy smartphone/digital camera on the stimulation of fashion trend and social influence. To sum up, product involvement andfashion involvement will influence buying decision in different ways and also the pastexperiences of urban women in Taiwan.

With great growth of the use of internet ,the communication based on computer-mediated system or so called electronic word-of-mouth becomes more important. In these ways to exchange information, forward mail is unique and powerful especially. In this research, we would like to know what factors make people to decide to forward a e-mail or not, and what kind of roles these factors play in the process to make decision. Three factors were discussed in this research, including¡Gmessage framing, source credibility and product involvement, and the theory of reasoned action was applied to explain the behavior of forwarding e-mail. Through ANOVA and regression analysis to analyze 472 effective samples, the findings are outlined below¡G 1. E-mail users hold better attitude to forward negative message, and have more intention to forward it. 2. E-mail users hold better attitude to forward the message which has high source credibility, and have more intention to forward it. 3. The effect of subjective norm on intention to forward the email is greater than the effect of attitude.

As the rapid development of the Internet advertisement, the Internet as a kind of advertising media has a greater competitive ability among all kinds of media. This study is designed to figure out the difference of print media and the Internet, especially in the field of advertising research. Using the laboratory experimentation and factorial experimental design, there are three factors in the study, including media properties (the Internet active media, the Internet static media, and print media), advertising appeals (rational and emotional appeal), and product involvement (high and low product involvement). Under such arrangement, the three factors result in 12 (3´2´2) different advertising strategies. The findings are as the followings: 1.The Internet active media can increase the advertising effect efficiently, while the machine-interactivity can¡¦t increase advertising effects. 2.Advertising appeals aren¡¦t able to influence the advertising effect efficiently. 3.The composition of emotional appeal and the Internet active media is the best advertising strategy to advertising effects; while the composition of rational appeal and each media property will not be able to achieve better advertising effects. 4.Product involvement is irrelevant to the advertising effect in the study. 5.The male consumers preferred the composition of the Internet active media and high product involvement, and they also like the composition of the Internet static media and low product involvement. 6.Consumers with BS. Degree or above preferred the composition of the Internet active media and emotional appeal. 7.The 46 above age group preferred the composition of low product involvement and emotional appeal, and they also like the composition of high product involvement and rational appeal.

The two primary objectives for this thesis are (1) to understand the effectiveness of different types of mobile phone based advertisements and (2) to identify if the amount of time users spent viewing an advertisement can be used as a measure of advertising effectiveness. To achieve these objectives, this study first conducted qualitative studies consisting of a focus group with consumers and an interview with a mobile advertising technology provider. Qualitative study results identified the following variables of interest; vividness of the advertisement, product involvement, and consumer goals. Supported by existing literature on advertising, these variables were then used to develop a conceptual model outlining the relationship between the variables and measures of advertising effectiveness. To empirically examine this model, this study conducted a 3x2x4 experiment of high, medium and low advertisement mode vividness, high and low product involvement and four stages of pre-purchase consumer goals. A total of 288 responses were collected from a student sample from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. The dependence relationships outlined in the conceptual model were then analysed using ANCOVA, logistic regression, linear regression, and various other non-parametric analysis techniques. The results of this study suggest that level of advertisement mode vividness and product involvement both exert a strong influence on the effectiveness of the advertisement. However, results on consumer goals suggest that the effectiveness of the advertisement is only affected by whether a consumer goal existed before viewing the advertisement. This study was unable to identify any relationship between the effectiveness of an advertisement and the amount of time users spent viewing an advertisement on a mobile phone.

Opinion leadership and opinion seeking are central constructs in academic studies of new product innovations. Fashion opinion leaders as those individuals who accelerate the fashion maturity process by legitimising a fashionable trend and influence other consumers to adopt the new innovative style as a replacement for the current accepted one. Consumers who accept information and adopt new style innovations are called opinion seekers and are important to the diffusion of new fashions because they may act on the information they receive from the opinion leaders. In South Africa, the fashion industry, which consists of a combination of the manufacturing, retail, media and recruitment sectors, generates billions of South African rands per annum, and is the fifth largest employment sector in the country. In fact, the fashion and textile industry in South Africa employed approximately 143 000 people in March of 2005, and contributed 12 percent to total manufacturing employment. Post 1994, it was evident that the fashion industry in South Africa underwent a metamorphosis from a protected market where domestic manufacturers dominated to a market that increasingly faced competition from international sources. During the first decade of democracy, the country joined the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and opened its creative market to international trade. This saw the industry generate sales of R34 billion, of which 9.4 percent was from clothing sales, and with only 18.7 percent of textiles output being exported. This suggests that the South African retailing industry yields substantial value chain power. There appears to be few published research studies focusing on fashion opinion leadership and opinion seeking amongst the black Generation Y students in South Africa. Owing to the importance of the fashion industry sector, together with the ethnic and cultural diversity of Abstract South Africa, the size of the black Generation Y cohort, and the higher social standing and future earning potential of those with a tertiary qualification, it is important to explore black Generation Y students’ fashion opinion leadership/seeking and fashion involvement. In South Africa, the Generation Y cohort is the first generation to grow up in an era of freedom and constantly changing technology – two forces that serve to broaden the divergence between this fascinating generation and previous generations. In 2013, the Generation Y individuals accounted for an estimated 38 percent of the South African population, and members of the black Generation Y accounted for 83 percent of the country’s Generation Y cohort. The primary objective of this study was to investigate fashion clothing involvement, fashion purchase decision involvement, fashion opinion leadership and fashion opinion seeking behaviour amongst South African black Generation Y students. The target population for this study were male and female black undergraduate and postgraduate students, aged between 18 and 24, and enrolled at South African registered public higher education institutions (HEIs). The sampling frame for this study constituted the 23 South African registered public HEIs that existed in 2013. This sampling frame was narrowed down using judgement sampling to two HEI campuses in the Gauteng province – one from a traditional university and one from a university of technology. The Gauteng province was selected over other provinces in the country because it contained the highest percentage of the 23 public HEIs. A self-administered questionnaire was designed based on the scales used in previous studies. Lecturers at each of the two campuses selected to form part of the sample were contacted and asked if they would allow the questionnaire to be administered on their students during lectures. Once permission had been gained, the questionnaires were distributed to students during the scheduled lectures. The questionnaire requested respondents to indicate on a six-point Likert scale the extent of their agreement/disagreement with items designed to measure their fashion clothing involvement, fashion opinion leadership and fashion opinion seeking. In addition, the students were asked to provide certain demographic data. Abstract The findings of this study provide valuable insights into fashion clothing involvement, fashion purchase decision involvement, fashion opinion leadership and fashion opinion seeking behaviour amongst black Generation Y students in South Africa. Findings from this study show that there is a significant relationship between fashion product involvement, fashion purchase involvement, fashion opinion leadership and fashion opinion seeking amongst black Generation Y students, and that females have a significantly higher level of fashion product involvement compared to males. Insights gained from this study will help fashion marketing better understand this cohort’s involvement in fashion, which, in turn, should help them tailor their marketing efforts in such a way as to appeal to this segment in an improved manner. / MCom (Marketing Management), North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2014

Opinion leadership and opinion seeking are central constructs in academic studies of new product innovations. Fashion opinion leaders as those individuals who accelerate the fashion maturity process by legitimising a fashionable trend and influence other consumers to adopt the new innovative style as a replacement for the current accepted one. Consumers who accept information and adopt new style innovations are called opinion seekers and are important to the diffusion of new fashions because they may act on the information they receive from the opinion leaders. In South Africa, the fashion industry, which consists of a combination of the manufacturing, retail, media and recruitment sectors, generates billions of South African rands per annum, and is the fifth largest employment sector in the country. In fact, the fashion and textile industry in South Africa employed approximately 143 000 people in March of 2005, and contributed 12 percent to total manufacturing employment. Post 1994, it was evident that the fashion industry in South Africa underwent a metamorphosis from a protected market where domestic manufacturers dominated to a market that increasingly faced competition from international sources. During the first decade of democracy, the country joined the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and opened its creative market to international trade. This saw the industry generate sales of R34 billion, of which 9.4 percent was from clothing sales, and with only 18.7 percent of textiles output being exported. This suggests that the South African retailing industry yields substantial value chain power. There appears to be few published research studies focusing on fashion opinion leadership and opinion seeking amongst the black Generation Y students in South Africa. Owing to the importance of the fashion industry sector, together with the ethnic and cultural diversity of Abstract South Africa, the size of the black Generation Y cohort, and the higher social standing and future earning potential of those with a tertiary qualification, it is important to explore black Generation Y students’ fashion opinion leadership/seeking and fashion involvement. In South Africa, the Generation Y cohort is the first generation to grow up in an era of freedom and constantly changing technology – two forces that serve to broaden the divergence between this fascinating generation and previous generations. In 2013, the Generation Y individuals accounted for an estimated 38 percent of the South African population, and members of the black Generation Y accounted for 83 percent of the country’s Generation Y cohort. The primary objective of this study was to investigate fashion clothing involvement, fashion purchase decision involvement, fashion opinion leadership and fashion opinion seeking behaviour amongst South African black Generation Y students. The target population for this study were male and female black undergraduate and postgraduate students, aged between 18 and 24, and enrolled at South African registered public higher education institutions (HEIs). The sampling frame for this study constituted the 23 South African registered public HEIs that existed in 2013. This sampling frame was narrowed down using judgement sampling to two HEI campuses in the Gauteng province – one from a traditional university and one from a university of technology. The Gauteng province was selected over other provinces in the country because it contained the highest percentage of the 23 public HEIs. A self-administered questionnaire was designed based on the scales used in previous studies. Lecturers at each of the two campuses selected to form part of the sample were contacted and asked if they would allow the questionnaire to be administered on their students during lectures. Once permission had been gained, the questionnaires were distributed to students during the scheduled lectures. The questionnaire requested respondents to indicate on a six-point Likert scale the extent of their agreement/disagreement with items designed to measure their fashion clothing involvement, fashion opinion leadership and fashion opinion seeking. In addition, the students were asked to provide certain demographic data. Abstract The findings of this study provide valuable insights into fashion clothing involvement, fashion purchase decision involvement, fashion opinion leadership and fashion opinion seeking behaviour amongst black Generation Y students in South Africa. Findings from this study show that there is a significant relationship between fashion product involvement, fashion purchase involvement, fashion opinion leadership and fashion opinion seeking amongst black Generation Y students, and that females have a significantly higher level of fashion product involvement compared to males. Insights gained from this study will help fashion marketing better understand this cohort’s involvement in fashion, which, in turn, should help them tailor their marketing efforts in such a way as to appeal to this segment in an improved manner. / MCom (Marketing Management), North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2014