2020, Vol.9, No.2

Asia Review 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.86

pISSN : 2234-0386
https://journal.kci.go.kr/asiareview

Today, mobile devices serve as the primary communications and media vehicles for many and play an increasingly important role in the daily lives of consumers in both developed and high-growth economies. Smartphone apps are software applications developed for use on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Once developed, an app is sold via an application distribution platform, commonly known as an app store. As the profit margins from app sales are small, an app should ideally appeal to a large number of users worldwide in order to be successful. However, many developers are unaware that users from different countries have different behaviors and needs, and that these factors affect app downloads. To better understand today’s mobile world, we selected data from South Korea and India for an indepth look at mobile consumers and how they use their devices around the globe. The proposed research model includes a number of constructs such as app perceptions, customer service, perceived ease of use, design, promotion, perceived consumer risk and connectivity. In South Korea, empirical results revealed that perceived consumer risks have a negative relationship with consumers’ perceived repurchase intention. All of the other variables are found to be positively related to the repurchase intentions. In India, customer service and perceived consumer risks are not supported and all of the other hypotheses are statistically significant.

Two mass civil movements shaped Iran and Tunisia 10 years ago. In Iran, the political movement arose against a fraudulent presidential election in 2009. In Tunisia, Ben Ali’s authoritarian regime collapsed by the mass civil demonstration with the resentment on the high unemployment, corruption, and the lack of political freedom. According to Bayat, unlike the conventional revolution, those two civil movements occurred spontaneously without a certain ideology or ideologue. This article argues that the failure of Neo-Liberalism policy in 1980s led to the mass civil disobedience to the ante quo in Iran and Tunisia. There was the high expectation from the people that the Neo-Liberalism would enhance the level of political freedom and the economy. The elite cartel, however, monopolized the benefit of Neo-Liberalism policy and the authoritarian regimes strengthened the violent political apparatus rather than opening the political freedom. There has been rising of the economic polarization, the unemployment rate and deteriorating social injustice with the perpetual corruption in Iranian and Tunisian society. Drawing on the discrepancy between the high expectation on change and the harsh reality, the relative depression drove the mass political unrest. Those civil movements and their aftermath are significant markers for where Iran and Tunisia stand today. In this regard, this article draws the analysis on the development process of those movements and their aftermath in the context of Neo-Liberalism.

Q-pop refers to popular music that was developed by applying or combining western music composition techniques on the basis of the musical elements in Kazakhstan. Even though western and Korean pop music played an important role in the creation and development of Q-pop, reviews or research about the topic itself as well as how Q-pop changes Kazakh society have not been made comprehensively. This study aims to compensate the research gap by investigating the new popular culture phenomenon that is termed as a Q-Pop with ‘Q’ standing for Kazakhstan, and ‘Pop’ meaning popular music. The issue of the new ideology of ‘Q’ – the prefix of Q-pop will be critically examined by the recognition of new nationalism in Kazakhstan. It also discusses how the way of listening has changed in relation to the form and content of popular music in Kazakhstan. Based on this analysis, the study intends to examine Q-pop’s challenges in the present and its potential in the future.