All posts by Jaewoo Joo

Jaewoo Joo is a Professor of Marketing at Kookmin University. He also teaches in the Experience Design program at the Graduate School of Techno Design. Jaewoo holds a PhD in Marketing from the University of Toronto and earned his MBA and BA from Seoul National University. During his doctoral studies in Canada, he developed an interest in design thinking and behavioral economics to overcome the limitations of conventional practices in design and marketing. Jaewoo currently collaborates with industrial leaders, marketing agencies, and startup founders. Through field experiments, he designs experiences that are both intuitive and strategic. He enjoys sharpening practical insights and contributing to academic research.
Cases

Laundromat in Osaka: How to turn a chore into an experience

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I recently visited Zentis Osaka and discovered a lesson in experience design hidden behind the door marked “Room 001.”

The typical hotel laundry room is a purely utilitarian space, equipped only with the essentials: washers, dryers, and an iron.

Zentis, however, focused not just on the chore itself, but on how guests spend time while waiting. They transformed the often-dreary waiting area into an unexpected, welcoming third place.

This space is like a residential lounge. It has rich leather chairs, a comfortable sofa, and a table. A bookshelf with selected books is there. Also, a premium coffee machine offers fresh coffee.

This hotel recognized the fundamental gap between laundry as a necessary chore and hospitality as a comprehensive experience. By intentionally elevating a mundane task, they turned the waiting time into a moment of relaxation.

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Reference

Baek, J., & Choe, Y. (2025). Detrimental Impact of Waiting on Dining Experiences: Evidence from Online Restaurant Reviews. Asia Marketing Journal, 27(1), 39-47.

This study employs big data analytics to examine customers’ waiting experiences in restaurants, a critical component of the broader hospitality and tourism industry. Drawing upon a large corpus of online reviews, the analysis uses topic modeling to identify four salient themes that emerge—waiting, food, servicescape, and service quality—informing the way in which customers perceive and evaluate dining experiences. Two subsequent regression analyses reveal a significant negative relationship between waiting-related comments and overall review ratings, underscoring the disproportionate influence of waiting experiences in shaping customer satisfaction. These findings offer valuable insights for hospitality and tourism practitioners and researchers aiming to deepen their understanding of how waiting times and experiences can impact service perceptions and overall consumer evaluations in restaurant contexts.

Cases

The “Woman Owned” advantage: Makers Market’s strategy to signal competence

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Last month, I stopped by Napa city to see my friend. There, I found the store Makers Market. It was founded in 2014 by Suzy Ekman with the idea to rebuild the American-made legacy. I visited Makers Market at a different location before, writing its hand-crafted goods and natural materials, which signal authenticity.

But this time, I noticed their other, secret weapon. The chalkboard sign outside listed three things.

  • Hand-crafted
  • Sustainable
  • Woman owned

“Woman owned” is actually a very smart way to signal competence. People often think women have warmth, but maybe less business competence. When the business owner chooses to put this fact on the sign, it may flip the stereotype and could become a confident statement: “I am a successful owner of a high-quality business.”

This is not only my idea. A recent marketing research demonstrates that using the “woman-owned” label increases the perception of service quality. For businesses like Makers Market, this simple sign is a powerful strategy to overcome stereotypes and gain customer trust.

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Reference

Davis, N., & Kim, T. (2025). ‘Woman-Owned Business’ Labels Enhance Perceived Competence. Journal of Consumer Research, 52(1), 115-134.

Gender bias is widely recognized as having negative effects on women in business, including on outcomes such as hiring, promotion, pay, and access to venture capital funding. This study identifies a strategy that women business owners can employ to boost business outcomes. Across five preregistered studies (N = 2585), including a field study, affixing the owner attribute label “woman-owned business” can engender positive business outcomes, including perceptions of business competence and service quality (studies 1 and 2). These effects are driven by an increase in perceptions of the business owner’s agency (study 3). Affixing a gender-based owner attribute label is especially effective in situations that lack other credible cues of competence (study 4) and in industries that are perceived as difficult to succeed in (study 5). The present work advances our understanding of stereotypes, discrimination, and identity in the consumer marketplace, and it offers practical implications for business owners in traditionally marginalized groups who face—and must combat—stereotypes.

Publications

Smart home paradox: Why reviews and teasers failed

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Most digital marketers rely heavily on customer reviews or teasers. However, when we collaborated with Samsung Electronics to run two field experiments, we uncovered a critical mismatch between messaging and audience.

We specifically targeted busy, dual-earner parents. Our surprising finding is that benefit-driven formats like customer reviews or teaser pages were largely ignored. Instead, clear, feature-focused messaging outperformed the popular formats.

This field experiment demonstrates why a one-size-fits-all strategy fails in the complex smart home category, providing a necessary blueprint for engaging high-intent consumers with efficient, direct communication.

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Reference

Hwang, S., Yoon, N., & Joo, J. (2025). The impact of smart home products’ marketing messages on dual-earner parents’ willingness to pay. Journal of Product & Brand Management, 34 (5), 662-674.

Purpose: The objective of this study is to explore the effect of family and message type interactions on the sales of smart home products. The study hypothesizes that dual-earner parents, a prolific segment of consumers, will indicate a greater willingness to pay for smart home products when exposed to characteristics-related marketing messages.

Design/methodology/approach: Two quasi-experimental studies were conducted to test the hypothesis. In collaboration with Samsung Electronics, the studies utilized different smart home product bundles (Smart Air Care and Smart Safety Care), recruited distinct participant groups (parents of children aged three to five and parents of children aged zero to three), and manipulated different types of benefits-related messages (a user review video and a teaser page).

Findings: In response to smart home product messaging, dual-earner parents exhibited greater willingness to pay when exposed to characteristics-related messages compared to benefits-related messages. This difference was not found among single-earner parents.

Originality: Challenging conventional marketing assumptions, the findings demonstrate that benefits-related messages do not universally appeal to smart home product consumers, while characteristics-related messages can increase willingness to pay among dual-earner segment. The collaboration with Samsung Electronics in a quasi-experimental setting strengthens the external validity of the results, suggesting that marketers should tailor messaging strategies based on the characteristics of customer segments.

Keywords: Smart home products, dual-earner parents, message type, Samsung Electronics

“… dual-earner parents’ willingness to pay nearly doubled when presented with characteristics-related messages compared to benefits-related messages, increasing by 163% in Study 1 and 162% in Study 2. This suggests that tailoring messages to this group could significantly boost market penetration and profitability in the competitive smart home product sector.”

Cases

From farm to counter: What I learned from dining at Onikai Kyoto

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When I first arrived at the narrow entrance of Onikai near downtown Kyoto, I did not expect much. Inside this small restaurant, however, I found a huge counter filled with young, energetic staff who were joking and moving quickly. Since this place felt alive, it reminded me of Dutch Bros in California.

I ordered several dishes: an arugula salad, an eggplant topped with beef sauce, a mushroom rice cooked in a clay pot, and an eggplant slowly burnt and served with sesame. They were light and comfortable. Even when beef was used, they supported vegetables, not dominate them.

Later I learned that Onikai is part of the Isoya group, which runs several restaurants supplied by Isofarm, a local farm near Kyoto Station. Their simple philosophy is to serve vegetables that are fresh, local, and cooked to highlight their natural taste.

This vegetable-first idea feels right for today’s diners. People care about where their food comes from, but they do not all want to be vegan. Balancing freshness, taste, and casual atmosphere reminded me of how In-N-Out in California became trusted and popular by keeping food local and simple.

Dining at Onikai made me think more about what to eat in daily life. In many Western countries, people often focus on which vitamins or supplements to take every day. But Onikai’s vegetable-centered dishes remind me that health can come from everyday meals, not from bottles or pills.

I believe vegetable-centric meal will gradually be adopted by more diners around the world, not as a trend, but as a sustainable way of living.

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Reference

Sun, J. J., & Pham, M. T. (2025). What Makes Consumption Experiences Feel Special? A Multi-Method Integrative Analysis. Journal of Consumer Research, ucaf033.

This article addresses a simple theoretical question of high substantive relevance: What makes a consumption experience special in a consumer’s mind? To answer this question, the authors report an extensive multi-method investigation involving a grounded theory analysis of numerous consumer narratives and in-depth interviews, a field survey, a scale development study, a natural language processing analysis of more than 3 million Yelp reviews, a preregistered multi-factor causal experiment (and its preregistered replication), a blind comparison of hundreds of matched visual Instagram posts by third-party observers, and several small application studies. The findings converge in identifying three major psychological pillars of what makes consumption experiences feel special to consumers, each pillar involving different facets: (a) uniqueness, which arises from the rarity, novelty, irreproducibility, personalization, exclusivity, ephemerality, and surpassing of expectations of the experience; (b) meaningfulness, which pertains to the personal significance of the experience in terms of symbolism, relationships, self-affirmation, and self-transformation; and (c) authenticity, which relates to the perceived genuineness and realness of the experience in terms of its psychological proximity to some original source, iconicity, human sincerity, and connection to nature. As illustrated in the General Discussion, the findings have important substantive implications for the engineering of hedonic consumption experiences.

Cases

Credo Beauty: A Boutique with conviction

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Credo Beauty looks very different from big chains like Sephora or Ulta. Where most retailers try to carry as many brands as possible, Credo narrows its focus.

Only brands that pass its strict Credo Clean Standard make it onto the shelves. This means no products with more than 2,700 banned ingredients, full transparency on fragrance, independent safety testing, and commitments to sustainable packaging and ethical sourcing. Many brands want to be sold here because being “Credo-approved” signals credibility in the clean beauty movement.

This strategy gives Credo a strong presence even with only a few stores in California. Each store feels curated. For customers, shopping here means trust: if a product is inside Credo, it has passed a high bar.

Credo’s approach resembles Sephora. When Sephora opened in France in the 1970s, its key idea was open-sell: letting customers freely test and explore products instead of waiting at a counter. That sense of freedom made Sephora a revolutionary beauty destination. But as Sephora grew into a global empire, its focus shifted toward variety and scale.

Credo feels like a successor to Sephora’s original spirit such as intimate, curated, and trustworthy.

The comparison is similar to how In-N-Out reminds people of the original McDonald’s. Big chains evolve and expand, while new players take inspiration from the early, authentic idea. Credo shows that in beauty retail, less can be more when standards are clear.

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Reference

Beverland, M. B., & Farrelly, F. J. (2010). The quest for authenticity in consumption: Consumers’ purposive choice of authentic cues to shape experienced outcomes. Journal of consumer research, 36(5), 838-856.

Drawing from image-elicited depth interviews, we investigate whether consumers pursue the consumption of authentic objects with specific personal goals in mind. We find that consumers are motivated to focus on those particular cues in objects that for them convey authenticity (what is genuine, real, and/or true) and that this decision-making process is driven by a desire to draw different identity benefits (control, connection, virtue) from authentic objects. Our interpretive analysis elaborates contributions to theorizing related to consumer agency in seeking authentic consumption experience. We provide cultural explanations for the desire to assert the authentic self in these particular ways.

Beverland, M. B., & Farrelly, F. J. (2010). The quest for authenticity in consumption: Consumers’ purposive choice of authentic cues to shape experienced outcomes. Journal of consumer research, 36(5), 838-856.
Cases

More than products: How RH turns design into experience

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In November 2024 I dined at RH Restaurant at RH Yountville. The space blends indoor and outdoor under glass ceilings, with trickling fountains, olive trees, and chandeliers creating a dreamlike garden gallery.

A few months later I visited RH Rooftop Restaurant (Gallery at Stanford / Palo Alto). I sat under a glass-ceiling sunroom. Surrounded by white walls, reflections were everywhere. The entire room felt luminous.

Recently I went to RH Ocean Grill at RH Newport Beach in the evening. The panoramic coastal views were impressive; the decor and lighting heightened the moment.

RH began as Restoration Hardware, first known for high-end furniture. Over time it expanded its scope and became RH, a brand that connects design with lifestyle.

Today RH places its design in lived settings such as restaurants, guesthouses, and even private travel on its own jets RH One and RH Two or its yacht RH Three. This approach lets customers experience the brand directly, not just imagine it.

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Reference

Lemon, K. N., & Verhoef, P. C. (2016). Understanding customer experience throughout the customer journey. Journal of marketing, 80(6), 69-96.

Understanding customer experience and the customer journey over time is critical for firms. Customers now interact with firms through myriad touch points in multiple channels and media, and customer experiences are more social in nature. These changes require firms to integrate multiple business functions, and even external partners, in creating and delivering positive customer experiences. In this article, the authors aim to develop a stronger understanding of customer experience and the customer journey in this era of increasingly complex customer behavior. To achieve this goal, they examine existing definitions and conceptualizations of customer experience as a construct and provide a historical perspective of the roots of customer experience within marketing. Next, they attempt to bring together what is currently known about customer experience, customer journeys, and customer experience management. Finally, they identify critical areas for future research on this important topic.

Cases

Searching for my taste at Go Greek Yogurt

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I visited Go Greek Yogurt in Beverly Hills one morning. This place started in 2012, founded by people who wanted to bring authentic Greek yogurt and Mediterranean lifestyle to California.

Inside the store, I noticed a wall sign that explains six reasons why this yogurt is good: low sugar, low carb, low calorie, simple ingredients, high probiotics, and guilt-free indulgence. These messages match well with what young consumers want today.

The store offers nine different yogurts: Plain Tart, Chocolate Classic, Greek Honey, Rose Petals, Hazelnut, Mango, Blackberry, Strawberry, and Vegan Strawberry. I like this variety because I am still searching for the yogurt that fits me. What I love more is that nine different yogurts are stored in big transparent glass containers. This gives the impression that yogurts are home-made.

Variety also appears in the toppings. Some are natural fruits like strawberries and pineapples, while others are processed sweets like chocolates and Skittles. The staff was preparing fresh fruits by peeling and cutting them for the next serving.

The menu suggests combinations such as “House Classics,” mixing Greek Honey, Hazelnut, Rose, and Strawberry.

The portion is generous, enough to share or to replace a meal. Go Greek Yogurt is a nice mix of freshness and taste. It shows how yogurt can be both indulgent and healthy.

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Reference

Deng, X., & Srinivasan, R. (2013). When do transparent packages increase (or decrease) food consumption?. Journal of Marketing, 77(4), 104-117.

Transparent packages are pervasive in food consumption environments. Yet prior research has not systematically examined whether and how transparent packaging affects food consumption. The authors propose that transparent packaging has two opposing effects on food consumption: it enhances food salience, which increases consumption (salience effect), and it facilitates consumption monitoring, which decreases consumption (monitoring effect). They argue that the net effect of transparent packaging on food consumption is moderated by food characteristics (e.g., unit size, appearance). For small, visually attractive foods, the monitoring effect is low, so the salience effect dominates, and people eat more from a transparent package than from an opaque package. For large foods, the monitoring effect dominates the salience effect, decreasing consumption. For vegetables, which are primarily consumed for their health benefits, consumption monitoring is not activated, so the salience effect dominates, which ironically decreases consumption. The authors’ findings suggest that marketers should offer small foods in transparent packages and large foods and vegetables in opaque packages to increase postpurchase consumption (and sales).

Cases

Curating taste in Santa Barbara

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When I stayed at the Simpson House Inn in Santa Barbara, the staff told me to visit the Santa Barbara Company for gifts. They said it is the best place. I went there and saw why.

The store does not only sell items one by one. It makes gift boxes with many different things.

One basket had bath salts, white sage soap, a candle, and a seaside mist. These items are chosen for a calming ritual.

Another box had honey, tea bags, postcards, and a candle, showing the taste of Santa Ynez Valley.

A third box had cookies, a honey lollipop, dried flowers, and a small owl-shaped soap. Each box gave a different feeling.

Making these combinations is not simple. It is difficult to choose across categories and still make the gift feel right. But when it works, it matches well with the personal taste of the receiver. One good example is the wine display by the Inglenook winery.

I do not believe AI could easily perform this task. AI can recommend based on past data, but true curation requires subjectivity. To make new and surprising combinations, human taste and imagination are needed. In that sense, curated gift boxes remind me that human taste is still a unique form of intelligence

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Reference

Hwang, S., Park, H., Sohn, M., Yoo, D., Han, C., & Joo, J. (2022). Goal based bundling: A behaviorally informed strategy to combine multiple smart products. In G. Bruyns & H. Wei (Eds.), [ _ ] With Design: Reinventing Design Modes (pp. 2888–2901). Singapore: Springer.

Contemporary electronic manufacturers struggle with how to develop attractive bundles by combining their existing smart products. In the present work, we propose Goal Based Bundling (GBB) by drawing on the academic research of goal systems theory (Kruglanski et al., 2018) and shed light on two previously ignored aspects of bundling strategy: service and glue product. We applied our GBB to a collaborative project with Samsung Electronics, whose goal was to develop new product bundles for kids by combining multiple smart home products. We constructed a framework of Samsung Electronics’ smart products and then visualized it on its sales website. A UI design conveying the value of smart products bundle was developed based on GBB structure. We discuss the process and the result of our project to provide insights into the product managers who combine existing smart products to develop a bundle.

Cases

Triangle wine labels at Au Bon Climat

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I visited Au Bon Climat in Santa Barbara for a wine tasting. They served four wines under the same winery. Each wine had a different story: one was named after the winemaker’s mother, another after his daughter, and another after his son. The tasting experience combined with these stories felt personal.

What surprised me more was the wine label. Most wine bottles use square or rectangle labels, but Au Bon Climat uses a triangle label. This shape made the bottle stand out from many other wines on the shelf. Such a small design detail could change how people notice and remember a brand.

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Reference

Choi, B., & Joo, J. (2021). Authentic Information on the Back Label of Wine Bottle. Asia Marketing Journal, 23(3), 13–26.

This paper investigates whether including authentic information on the back labels of wine bottles enhances consumers’ confidence and purchase intentions about wine; it also assesses the moderating role of involvement and knowledge about wine. We conducted two experimental studies. Study 1 generated three findings. First, when the back label had authentic information, subjects showed higher confidence levels. Second, this effect was hold for subjects with low levels of involvement. Finally, we did not observe this effect for subjects with high levels of involvement. Study 2 extended study 1’s findings and identified the moderated mediation effect of confidence. The findings highlight the important impact on wine choice of authentic information. However, the findings also suggest that authentic information may not be sufficient to attract people with high levels of involvement and knowledge. This study’s findings provide wine producers with practical marketing insights.

Cases

Why every city needs a pocket park

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I walked into Gamble Garden in Palo Alto without expecting much. I thought it was just an empty, small garden.

But, a group of people were sitting together, eating lunch and talking. Some were on benches, having quiet conversations. It was peaceful. No one was in a hurry.

This garden was more than just flowers and trees. It was a place where local people met, ate lunch, and shared their thoughts. I didn’t plan to stay long, but the calm feeling made me stop and sit for a while.

Research says even just sitting in nature helps reduce stress and depression. I felt that. Big cities need more places like this. These “pocket parks” can help people feel better, meet friends, and take a break from busy life.

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Reference

Li, Y., Mao, Y., Mandle, L. et al. (2025), Acute mental health benefits of urban nature, Nature Cities, https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-025-00286-y.

Mental disorders are more prevalent in cities, yet the global impact of urban nature on mental health remains insufficiently understood. Here we address this gap by systematically reviewing 449 peer-reviewed studies and conducting a meta-analysis of 78 field-based experiments to quantify the effects of various urban nature types on 12 mental health outcomes. Our meta-analysis demonstrates that exposure to urban nature provides substantial benefits for a broad spectrum of mental health outcomes. Green spaces such as urban forests and parks emerged as key elements in mitigating negative moods, such as depression and anxiety, and enhancing overall mental well-being. In particular, the benefits of nature exposure are most pronounced among young adults, although consistent positive effects are evident across all age groups. These findings highlight the importance of safeguarding and expanding access to urban nature as a key strategy for enhancing public health and well-being in cities worldwide.

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