Chinese people need more than a drinking fountain

We know that westerners and easterners think differently. Markus and Kitayama (1991) argue that different cultural thoughts come from different self concepts. Roughly speaking, a US citizen has an independent concept whereas a Japanese citizen has a dependent one.


People in different cultures have strikingly different construals of the self, of others, and of the interdependence of the 2. These construals can influence, and in many cases determine, the very nature of individual experience, including cognition, emotion, and motivation. Many Asian cultures have distinct conceptions of individuality that insist on the fundamental relatedness of individuals to each other. The emphasis is on attending to others, fitting in, and harmonious interdependence with them. American culture neither assumes nor values such an overt connectedness among individuals. In contrast, individuals seek to maintain their independence from others by attending to the self and by discovering and expressing their unique inner attributes. As proposed herein, these construals are even more powerful than previously imagined. Theories of the self from both psychology and anthropology are integrated to define in detail the difference between a construal of the self as independent and a construal of the self as interdependent. Each of these divergent construals should have a set of specific consequences for cognition, emotion, and motivation; these consequences are proposed and relevant empirical literature is reviewed. Focusing on differences in self-construals enables apparently inconsistent empirical findings to be reconciled, and raises questions about what have been thought to be culture-free aspects of cognition, emotion, and motivation.

Although this research taught us Asians may think similarly to some extent, they do not necessarily behave in the same way. For instance, Asians seem to communicate in different modes depending on where they live. Recently, I have noticed that their preferences for water temperature differ greatly as well. At the Hong Kong international airport, for instance, no Chinese airline passengers used a drinking fountain. Instead they brought their own containers and stood in line for a hot water dispenser. I cannot imagine Koreans wait in line for hot water when cold water is available nearby. The world is full of different people!

Street signs for kids

I have never met any street sign which encourages someone to DO something. Instead, most street signs ask someone NOT to do something. For instance, they ask pedestrians not to run fast or they ask drivers not to drive fast.

However, at a school in Hong Kong, I finally met a different street sign designed for students. Several yellow people were painted on a street surrounding a tree. Interestingly, they ran by carrying different items including basketball, football, soda, and noodle (?!).

According to a group of psychologists, we behave differently when we are in the promotion-focused mode than when we are in the prevention-focused mode. I hope we see more promotion-focused street signs painted on the road (e.g., please fly drone here, please use mobile phone here, etc.).

Trope, Y., & Liberman, N. (2010). Construal-Level Theory of Psychological Distance. Psychological Review, 117(2), 440–463.

People are capable of thinking about the future, the past, remote locations, another person’s perspective, and counterfactual alternatives. Without denying the uniqueness of each process, it is proposed that they constitute different forms of traversing psychological distance. Psychological distance is egocentric: Its reference point is the self in the here and now, and the different ways in which an object might be removed from that point—in time, in space, in social distance, and in hypotheticality—constitute different distance dimensions. Transcending the self in the here and now entails mental construal, and the farther removed an object is from direct experience, the higher (more abstract) the level of construal of that object. Supporting this analysis, research shows (a) that the various distances are cognitively related to each other, (b) that they similarly influence and are influenced by level of mental construal, and (c) that they similarly affect prediction, preference, and action.

Commercial renewal project: Twix 2018

We decide to renew the Twix advertisement aired in 2012. This old advertisement, in fact, successfully emphasized the unique characteristics of the chocolate bar; the ingredients (biscuits and caramel) were visually demonstrated by the manufacturing process.

However, this advertisement lacked “targeting,” which raises a problem because many children and youngsters consume chocolate bars actively. Further, there was no punch line.

Therefore, we renew the old advertisement to resonate it with college students. We propose Twix is a rest and a comfort. In the renewed advertisement, we use fast-paced audio and video to show that contemporary college students are busy. When Twix is shown, we use slow-paced audio to propose that Twix helps busy students get relaxed. We also use the phrase “Have a Break, Have A Twix” in the end of the advertisement to clarify our proposition.

Written by Sungkyu Jin, Kyuwon Lee, Kyungkae Chang, and Haeyeon Park | Marketing Communication 2018 Fall | College of Business Administration, Kookmin University

Commercial renewal project: Canada Goose Light Weight Down Jacket 2018

People are afraid of cold winter. The Canadian Outdoors brand, Canada Goose, was born in 1957 for the Canadian Arctic Guards, researchers and explorers of the scientific institutes of the polar regions, and those working in the extreme weather conditions. This brand became popular under the slogan of freeing people from the cold. The current ad about the Canada Goose Light Weight Down Jacket emphasizes its core feature with the phrase of “Where warm can take you” as well as its light weight. In sum, the ad emphasizes that the jacket is warm and light.

The current ad with the magnificent nature of Canada’s Avalon Peninsula conveys how warm the Canada Goose jackets are. However, will this add lead Korean customers to buy the jacket? Korea is quite cold in winter but not as cold as polar regions. Canada Goose Ad needs to prove why its jacket is valuable to Korean customers.

We have changed the background of the current advertisement from nature to city. The current advertisement is of interest to mountaineers but may not attract urban dwellers. While doing so, we tried not to dilute the unique brand image. We also newly generated a phrase, Beyond Boundaries, to break the existing frame and get close to Korean customers.

Written by Junhyuk Kwon, Baliworin Dastan, Jungtaek Lim, Jieun Lim, and Suna | Marketing Communication 2018 Fall | College of Business Administration, Kookmin University

Commercial renewal project: Uniqlo Ezy Ankle Pants



Uniqlo represents SPA brands and its reasonable price attracts customers. Recently, it launched new pants called EZY ankle pants. Uniqlo promoted it on air but seemed to fail to attract attention compare to its other best selling products such as AIRISM and HEATTECT.

We decided to renew the commercial of the EZY ankle pants because the commercial highlighted color and fabric and demonstrated comfort through people dancing on the street. In our renewed commercial, we highlighted comfort, color, and fabric, all of which are competitive advantages. We filmed a person wearing EZY ankle pants and walking, running, doing exercise, and even attracting others.

Written by Yoonsu Kim, Hakyum Lee, Yoonsu Jang, and Chanhee Hong | Marketing Communication 2018 Fall | College of Business Administration, Kookmin University





Foreigners form impressions instantly about countries

In Berlin, Germany, I met a vending machine in a steel cage. Covering the machine with a cage surprised me because it was inside one of downtown subway stations. My friend told me the machine could be damaged at night by drunken people. I formed an impression that Germany was unsafe; juvenile vandalism, an action involving deliberate destruction of or damage to public or private property, was popular in this country.



A few days later, I met a public book shelf in another city. At a market in Frankfurt, people freely opened the window and picked up as many books to read as they wanted. Then, I corrected my impression and thought Germany is safe.



I find myself using trivial cues to quickly form an impression about a city or a country. A steel cage led me to think Germany was dangerous for tourists. However, as Brunswik suggested in his Les Model research, the first impression fails to reflect the truth. Soon after, leaning occurs. A book shelf changed my viewpoint about Germany; this country is safe for travel. I expect same things happen to foreigners. When Europeans come to an Asian country, they probably use a trivial cue to form an impression and use other cues to correct it. Learning should occur to understand different cities, countries, and culture correctly.


Brunswik, E. (1955). Representative design and probabilistic theory in a functional psychology. Psychological Review, 62(3), 193-217.

This is the core or basic paper in a symposium on the probability approach in psychology. The paper expands on earlier contentions of this author that the environment to which an organism must adjust is semi erratic and that therefore all functional psychology is inherently probabilistic, demanding a representative research design of its own, and leading to a special type of high-complexity, descriptive theory. “The expansions beyond the earlier publications… concern mainly the use of a behavioral example… ; the brief consideration of such semi representative policies as ‘canvassing’; certain comparisons with factorial design and the analysis of variance, as well as with non-functionalistic uses of probability in psychology; and a discussion of actual and potential applications to the clinical-social area and to related domains.”




Opt in vs. Opt out: Different defaults in different cities

I used to order the same sandwich at the Subway in Toronto (turkey-breast on a six inch, honey oat bread with lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and black olives). Subway opened a store recently in my campus in Seoul. 



I ordered the same meat and the same bread. Then, I said to a server the same vegetables, “lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and black olives.” She added cucumbers and peppers. I asked her why. She answered “I pull out the vegetables customers say.”



I noticed that most customers said nothing about vegetables. They considered the five vegetables on the window as the opt out, default options. Only few customers said “everything but…”



For the people who do not usually make a series of choices for a single meal, opt out default vegetables may relieve their burden. I expect choosing from meats and breads to vegetables and dressings are demanding for most Asians. For them, choosing which vegetables to add are additionally demanding. When they skip choosing vegetables, they may enjoy meals more even though they do not like to eat more vegetables.


Scheibehenne, B., Greifeneder, R., & Todd, P. M. (2010). Can There Ever Be Too Many Options? A Meta-Analytic Review of Choice Overload. Journal of Consumer Research, 37(3), 409–425.

The choice overload hypothesis states that an increase in the number of options to choose from may lead to adverse consequences such as a decrease in the motivation to choose or the satisfaction with the finally chosen option. A number of studies found strong instances of choice overload in the lab and in the field, but others found no such effects or found that more choices may instead facilitate choice and increase satisfaction. In a meta-analysis of 63 conditions from 50 published and unpublished experiments (N = 5,036), we found a mean effect size of virtually zero but considerable variance between studies. While further analyses indicated several potentially important preconditions for choice overload, no sufficient conditions could be identified. However, some idiosyncratic moderators proposed in single studies may still explain when and why choice overload reliably occurs; we review these studies and identify possible directions for future research.



What makes Copenhagen the most bike-friendly city in the planet?

Many cities aim to be bike-friendly but only few succeed. Wired ranked Copenhagen as the most bike-friendly city in 2015 and in 2017. Interestingly, an article in the same magazine estimated the cost to have a bike-friendly city.

… a fully-realized protected bike lane costs about $445,000 per mile, according to the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. (Infrastructure costs vary widely by location, but compare that to the $280,000 the city spends to install a single traffic signal, or the $571 million per mile spent building Presidio Parkway.) Temporary infrastructure can be built, studied, and scrapped if necessary without too much financial fuss.

Then, what will be the benefits of installing fully-realized protected bike lanes in the city? These special bike lanes will give two psychological benefits to bicycle riders: competence and autonomy.

First, bicycle riders will be competent when bike lanes are physically separated from car lanes. In Copenhagen, bike lanes are often mounted higher and sometimes are separated by bus lanes. When traffic lights are designated for bicycle riders, everyone on the street assume they should follow some kinds of traffic lights.



Bicycle riders will be competent when they notice certain things are designated solely for them. One example is the trash can angled on bike lanes. Another example is the pipe-shaped hand rest with a foot rest. Many riders lean on this device when they need to wait for the green light.



Second, bicycle riders feel autonomous when the bike lanes are wide enough for two bicycles. They are sometimes in a rush and other times want to go slow and steady. In Copenhagen, most of the bike lanes are wide enough to meet riders’ different needs.

In sum, cyclists in Copenhagen will enjoy competence and autonomy thanks to its fully-realized protected bike lanes. These two psychological motivations are the drivers for people to enjoy constrained creative experience (Dahl and Moreau 2007). We apply the same framework to understand the psychology of bike riders in the bike-friendly cities, which improve riders’ experiences in other cities.


Dahl, D. W., & Moreau, C. P. (2007). Thinking Inside the Box: Why Consumers Enjoy Constrained Creative Experiences. Journal of Marketing Research, 44(3), 357–369.

From cooking kits to home improvement shows, consumers are increasingly seeking out products that are designed to help them be creative. In this research, the authors examine why consumers participate in creative activities and under what conditions these experiences are the most enjoyable. A qualitative study explores the diverse motivations for undertaking creative tasks and identifies the role of constraints in such endeavors. Then, the authors conduct two experimental studies to understand the importance of constraints (e.g., instructional guidance, target outcomes) in facilitating a balance between perceived competence and autonomy for consumers involved in a creative task. When consumers engage in creative activities with a sense of both autonomy and competence, they enjoy the experience more. The authors discuss implications for managers and provide opportunities for further research.



Design Thinking vs. Behavioral Economics

Crate and Barrel sells various cookware. Most products in this store are grouped into product categories. However, some are grouped into why we need them. The two “ad hoc categories” are [7 Essentials for Every Kitchen] and [Everything You Never Knew You Needed].



Ad hoc categories, coined by Barsalou, motivate impulse buying. I bought some tools I did not plan ahead and saw some customers standing in front of the two sections for a while.

Barsalou, Lawrence W. (1983), “Ad hoc categories,” Memory & Cognition, 11 (3), 211-227.

People construct ad hoc categories to achieve goals. For example, constructing the category of “things to sell at a garage sale” can be instrumental to achieving the goal of selling unwanted possessions. These categories differ from common categories (e.g., “fruit,” “furniture”) in that ad hoc categories violate the correlational structure of the environment and are not well established in memory. Regarding the latter property, the category concepts, concept-to-instance associations, and instance-to-concept associations structuring ad hoc categories are shown to be much less established in memory than those of common categories. Regardless of these differences, however, ad hoc categories possess graded structures (i.e., typicality gradients) as salient as those structuring common categories. This appears to be the result of a similarity comparison process that imposes graded structure on any category regardless of type.

Interestingly, the two ad hoc categories in the Crate and Barrel tap into different psychological processes. [7 Essentials for Every Kitchen] are the products used by others. They nudge you to follow others, which is often recommended by behavioral economists. In contrast, [Everything You Never Knew You Needed] are the products useful for you. They help you discover your own unmet needs, which is always suggested by design thinkers.

Then, which framing is more effective between “competing against others” and “following your heart”?



We can answer this question by comparing the sales numbers between spatula and dual citrus squeezer. The two products belonged to the [Everything You Never Knew You Needed] four years ago. Now, only spatula belongs to the [7 Essentials for Every Kitchen]. If spatula sales have increased and squeezer sales did not, behavioral economics beats design thinking. In contrast, if spatula sales dropped and squeezer sales did not, design thinking beats behavioral economics.



Artwork at ICN airport

Something colorful was hung some distance below the ceiling at the Incheon international airport (ICN). At first it looks like a bunch of tiny colorful balloons. However, each one has different shapes and even move up and down.



The name of this interesting artwork is “Hello.”


This work uses Hangeul, a major cultural heritage of Korea, as a model to raise international awareness on the scientific excellence and creative design of the Korean language. The content, delivered by an object comprised of 1,000 Korean consonants and vowels, introduces the diverse travel cultures of countries around the world. With 1,000 Korean consonants and vowels as LED units, this artwork achieves three-dimensional forms and movements by connecting a motor and microcontroller unit to each consonant and vowels to control height and LED color. -By Kang HeeRa






Jaewoo Joo | design thinking, behavioral economics, new product development, new product adoption