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A Study on Consumer Perception and Preference of Cultural Creative Products

Chi-Hsien Hsu1, Jung-Yu Lin2, Rungtai Lin3 1,3Graduate School of Creative Industry Design, College

of Design, National Taiwan University of Arts No. 59, Sec. 1, Daguan Rd., Banciao District, New

Taipei City 22058, Taiwan 1assah16@gmail.com, 3rtlin@ntua.edu.tw

2Department of Crafts & Design, National Taiwan University of Arts, Taiwan

No. 59, Sec. 1, Daguan Rd., Banciao District, New Taipei City 22058, Taiwan

2s60583@gmail.com

ABSTRACT With in economic globalization, the cultural and creative industry is a strategy for the eternal conservation of traditional culture and the revival of localized industries based on creativity through the development of techniques and design innovation. During the process of the transformation and innovation of traditional cultural and localized characteristics, we make old things fashionable such as local culture, specialty goods and tourist destinations, which have become a new business chance to improve local economic conditions. The current studies tend towards the investigation of theories, the property of the structure or the module of product design but not the concept of consumer perception or preference. As a result, this study is to look into the strategy of the design of cultural creative products by the investigation and analysis of consumer perception and preference. We even expect it to be used as a reference of future design and marketing research.

This study was implemented in two phases. The first phase started with a synthesis of literature review, and interviews for expert opinions (five experts dedicated to multi-fields such as culture, innovation, marketing etc.) In the fields of traditional culture, local elements and innovative fashion, we separately chose the fifteen most representative product samples and evaluation indices from the top three winners of “Taiwan e-Learning and Digital Archives Commercial Application of Competition”, the “Taiwan One Town One Product Design Competition”, and the National Palace Museum’s “Old is New” campaign. The second phase was to give a questionnaire survey to 177 undergraduate students who voluntarily participated in this study, and, using the SPSS Statistics, to analyze the factors and descriptive statistics in order to investigate consumer perception and preference. According to the questionnaire survey and the analysis of the results, “Design Performance” is the most important factor for evaluating cultural creative products.

Keywords Consumer perception, evaluation index, cultural creative products.

INTRODUCTION As the demands of life increase, the consumer market advances into an era of experience-focus and aesthetic economics. The distinctness of local culture and the structure of innovation-knowledge become the national

core competency. It’s seen within the trend of the promotion of cultural and creative industries as an important strategy for economic development in each country. We hope to achieve the balance between economic output value and life quality by showing traditional culture and localized characteristics.

With the changes of customers’ needs and perceptions, the consumer market is evolving simultaneously conducted by customer-orientation and consequentially design processes are much focused on the diversity and cultural features of product specifications. For example, the manufacturers of pewter in the UK through its alliances with crafts-based designers, have transformed its learning capabilities in order to add value to its products and create new organizational knowledge [23]. Furthermore, the fashion and textiles industry in Hong Kong is going through a rapid transformation period from production to design servicing, and definition of good fashion design in which 'design qualities', 'market value' and 'brand image' were the three most important attributes, dominating in the design theories of fashion designers when creating new fashion [18].

To be successful, innovative products must have a clear and significant difference features that is related to market need. In addition, “Culture” plays an important role in the design field, and “cross cultural design” will be a key design evaluation point in the future [11,12]. Designing “local features” into modern product will be a design trend in the global market. In a globalized economy, the cultural and creative industry is an emerging industry with creativity as its core. Design strategy is considered to be one of the pivotal components in cultural and creative industries, and this will have a significant impact on consumer perception of innovation.

Because the influence of art and culture extends to the industry value chain, the industry must create aesthetic innovations on the basis of consumer culture [15]. Therefore, it is critical to design a product with cultural value and localized characteristics. Such as the design theory of the Japanese fashion designers is portrayed through the major constructs, namely, “aesthetic presence” and “psychological satisfaction” [1]. Li and Ho [10] discussed about the cooperation between the Taiwan National Palace Museum and Italian fashion brand ALESSI and their inharmonic opinions reported on various newspaper articles. Besides, they investigated of discourses about cultural creative products from the

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museum world and the design field and with a practical inspection of cultural creative products in museums.

In order to design “local features” into “innovative products”, we need to study how to link between “local culture” and “global market”, and then the results can be transformed into product design [8]. Therefore the importance of considering market factors and consumer needs during the innovation process of traditional cultural characteristics. Hence, this research takes the project results of recent promotions of cultural and creative industries in Taiwan as research samples and discusses the design evaluation indices of cultural creative products, analyzes its link to consumer perception and provides references for follow up product design strategy and marketing.

CULTURAL AND CREATIVE INDUSTRIES IN TAIWAN Based on technology and with designs and innovations that have added value through culture and aesthetics, advanced countries already show their competitive edge. Advocates of “Glocalization” point out that exactly because of the development of globalization, local culture started to correspond with globalization in search for a path to self-development [6]. When facing the impact of economic globalization, traditional culture and local industries try to transform themselves, and, through a process of innovation, let old things become new and fashionable. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [21] believes that cultural creative products have both economic and cultural value, and through cultural embodiment and heritage, become a vehicle for cultural identity, value and meaning.

Starting in 2002, with the successive promotion of the policies “Challenge 2008: National Development Plan” and “Six Emerging Industries” and the action plan “Creative Taiwan - Cultural and Creative Industries Development Program”, Taiwan implemented policies for the advancement of cultural and creative industries [3]. Furthermore, all ministries implement relevant policies as well: for example the “Taiwan e-Learning and Digital Archives Program” for the digitalization of national collections of cultural relics by the National Science Council and the “OTOP – One Town One Product” counseling program to assist SMEs to use distinctive industries, supervised by the Small and Medium Enterprise Administration (SMEA) of Ministry of Economic Affairs. In addition, the National Palace Museum turned to horizontal alliances through active brand licensing, thus, making the National Palace Museum an industry cluster for domestic and international cultural and creative industries.

Taiwan e-Learning and Digital Archives Program Innovations and applications of information technologies and the internet facilitate the emergence of the digital content industry. With the continuous promotion of the “Taiwan e-Learning and Digital Archives Program” (2008-2012), Taiwan, in addition to the digital preservation and innovation of important

cultural assets, advances open learning resources and equal learning opportunities, and, with the integration of information technology and humanities, promote industrial and economic development [14] (Figure 1). Through the transformation of information technology and the establishment of digital archives, as well as through reorganization and innovation, the basis of industrial development was built. Since applications of digital archive materials have become more diverse, a variety of business models have gradually been developed. And in order to integrate the content of digital archives into industry, education and the humanistic and social development, the “Taiwan e-Learning and Digital Archives Commercial Application Competition” was started in 2006. The purpose of the contest is the promotion of value-added applications of digital archives, highlighting the value of Taiwan’s diverse and rich digital archives that invigorate Taiwan’s cultural creative capabilities and create business opportunities.

Figure 1. Website of cultural and creative industries in

Taiwan [4,19]

Taiwan One Town One Product Guiding Program The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) has been promoting the One Town One Product (OTOP) program since 1989 in Taiwan. It is a counseling program to assist local cultural industries and to develop characteristic local products based on the categories township, town and city area. Offers vary from handicrafts and food to recreational activities in the countryside (Figure 1). It assists local businesses to integrate tradition and creative ideas into regional specialties and enhance their value-added products. At the same time the program connects local development associations with various tourism resources to upgrade industries with local characteristics. Distinctive industries like Yingge ceramics, Hsinchu glass, Daxi dried bean curd and Yuchih black tea are all success stories of the counseling program [17]. Furthermore, to give the public an understanding of regional distinct industries and design aesthetics and to advertise Taiwan’s life, culture and regional spirit, the SMEA began to organize the Taiwan OTOP Design competition in 2007. With the use of local characteristics combined with innovative ideas, traditional products are given innovative applications. Finally, domestic production and access to sales services open innovation opportunities for businesses of regional distinct industries.

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The “Old is New” Campaign of NPM Since 2005, the National Palace Museum which accommodates rich Chinese cultural assets has entrusted the Taiwan Design Center with the implementation of the “Old is New” campaign. The cultural elements of the museum’s objects serve as the source of the creative design, hence bringing its cultural creative products closer to daily life and at the same time moving towards internationalization [20]. In 2005 the “Innovative Design of Generation Y” was organized, and interdisciplinary design teams consisting of teachers and students from universities and colleges as well as design companies were invited to transform old cultural objects into innovative products. Since 2006, the National Palace museum has conducted a design competition for the application of cultural objects. In pursuit of internationalization, the National Palace Museum went one step further and cooperated with the internationally renowned brand ALESSI to design and develop a series of articles for daily use. Through ALESSI’s international retail stores, the National Palace Museum can promote its objects to international markets by giving them a taste of modern design and fashion.

RESEARCH METHOD Cultural creative products are made for the global market, using materials and elements from traditional culture or with regional characteristics. With the development of technology, design and creativity, traditional culture can be maintained and local industries revived, and with the charm of traditional culture and local characteristics, economic output and life quality can be balanced. The literature discussed in the previous chapter serves as the foundation of this research. It summarizes the plans for cultural and creative industries that were promoted by Taiwan in recent years and serves as case study. It can be divided into three categories: (1) Traditional Culture: Using the traditional “cultural image” to reach product differentiation; (2) Local Elements: use “local features” to transform the industry by changing design; (3) Innovative Fashion: focus in the global market and use “innovative design” to create characteristic products.

Figure 2. The research framework

This research first undertakes a preliminary survey on the basis of the literature review and the suggestions of a group of experts (5 interdisciplinary experts from fields of culture, creativity and industry). We selected

representative product samples and evaluation indices according to the criteria of traditional culture, local elements and innovative fashion. Second, we carried out a questionnaire survey and analyzed the outcome of the research with SPSS Statistics 17.0. We used descriptive statistics and factor analysis to analyze the consumer perception and preference of the participants. The framework of this study is shown in Figure 2.

Participants In total, 190 people participated in this study, with 177 valid participants (13 had to be excluded because their answers were not complete), consisting of 58 male and 119 female participants. Participants were undergraduate and graduate students from the National Taiwan University of Arts, the Chinese Culture University and the National Taipei College of Business with an educational background in design (57 participants), Communication Management (68 participants) and Arts and Humanities (52 participants) as show in Table 1.

Background Participants

Excluded Male Female Sub-total

Design Related 19 38 57 5 Communication

Management Related

27 41 68 7

Arts and Humanities

Related 12 40 52 1

Total 58 119 177 13 Table 1. Participants in the questionnaire survey

Cultural Products P01 P02 P03 P04 P05

“Pinban

Boat” handbag

“Beauty of the

Mountains” cruet

“Domineering” towel rail

“Grandmother's Fashion” brooch

“The Words of Love”

wedding gift

Local Products P06 P07 P08 P09 P10

“Tea-

Flavored Egg” tea

caddy

“Bamboo” table lamp “Rush” chair

“Steamed Dumpling”

cruet

“Recalling the Past” CD

player

Innovative Products P11 P12 P13 P14 P15

“Dragon

Claw” bottle opener

“Mr. & Mrs. Chin” Salt and pepper

set

“Jadeite Cabbage”

parasol

“The Writing Manual” briefcase

“Mandarin” Squeezer

with goblet

Table 2. Three different categories of product samples

Selection of Experiment Samples We selected the product samples with the help of product images and design descriptions from related books, magazines and websites. Samples include the top three works of previous “Taiwan e-Learning and Digital Archives Commercial Application Competitions” (15

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samples), works of previous “Taiwan One Town One Product Design Competitions” (24 samples) and selected products from the “Old is New Campaign of National Palace Museum” as well as top products from design competitions organized by the National Palace Museum (20 samples). In addition, we appointed a group of experts (5 experts from the fields of culture, creativity and industry). We defined the categories “Traditional Culture”, “Local Elements” and “Innovative Fashion” and selected 5 products for each category, with 15 in total (see Table 2).

Selection of Evaluation Indices First, we compiled competition assessment criteria, integrated relevant research for the traditional culture evaluation index category [5,13], the local elements evaluation index category [9,22] and the innovative fashion evaluation index category [2,16], and selected 16 items for each evaluation index. Second, the appointed expert group selected 6 representative items for each evaluation index (from the three categories: traditional culture, local elements and innovative fashion), with 18 items in total.

Procedure According to the previous survey, we selected 15 product samples and 18 evaluation indices and prepared the questionnaire and the explanation. Before the subjects filled out the questionnaires we first explained them the procedure. The first part of the questionnaire is “Personal Data”, followed by the “Design Evaluation Index” survey and the “Personal Preference” survey. The “Design Evaluation Index” survey shows 15 color images of product samples, with a short description of the design characteristics under each picture. This part consists of 18 questions of evaluation indices. Participants rated the evaluation indices of the product according to their own experience and perception, or, in other words, indicated their degree of identification. We used a 7-point Likert scale and the subjects indicated their responses by circling the boxes; 1 indicates a low identification with the index, 7 a high identification with the index. In the last part, the “Personal Preference” survey, participants ranked the items “Personal Preference Product” and “Evaluation Index Importance” from 1 to 9; a smaller value indicates a higher personal preference.

RESULTS AND ANALYSIS We used this experiment to understand how the participants assess the design of cultural creative products. 177 of the 190 collected questionnaires were valid, and we used SPSS Statistics 17.0 to evaluate the statistical data and investigate the potential factors of evaluating product samples and the Design Evaluation Indices.

Factor Analysis of Design Evaluation Indices We used factor analysis to investigate the internal relationship between the items of the questionnaire and distill them into a few factors. The participants rated the

design of the cultural creative products with the 18 Evaluation Indices; these ratings were reduced in number and given a new name for the factor analysis. This way we tried to find the common factors that influence the participant’s rating of the products.

The first goal of this research is to find the factors of the cultural creative Evaluation Indices and to analyze the results. Before we implemented the factor analysis we first used KMO and Bartlett’s test to analyze the results from the questionnaires. The KMO measure is 0.948, which is bigger than the determined value 0.6 and the Bartlett’s test of sphericity is significant; hence, the results of the questionnaires are suitable to use factor analysis [7]. In this research we used the principal component analysis, to extract 3 common factors. The value of the variance indicates the explanatory power of each factor. The explanatory power of factor 1 is 71.86%, the explanatory power of factor 2 is 8.26% and the explanatory power of factor 3 is 3.69%. The cumulative explanatory variance is 83.81% (Table 3). The 18 items of the questionnaire can be distilled into three factors that influence the perception and judgment of cultural creative products. According to the statistical results, and after the arrangement of all factors and their included variables as well as the renaming of the factors, we distinguished the factors “Design Performance”, “Cultural Elements” and “Prevalent Trend”.

Dimensions Evaluation Index Factor loadings

Factor 1

Factor 2

Factor 3

Design Performance

A12 Unique Idea .795 .392 .314 A13 Innovative Design .785 .355 .362 A14 Texture .748 .381 .462 A10 Design Quality .746 .416 .411 A05 Aesthetic Image Form .744 .454 .278 A18 Overall Presentation .733 .353 .450 A06 Appearance Style .719 .558 .228 A09 Product Function .678 .270 .522 A15 Emotion .565 .349 .511

Cultural Elements

A04 Background Story .261 .857 .304 A01 Special Meaning .373 .818 .120 A03 Evokes Feelings .214 .802 .356 A02 Cultural Characteristic .487 .801 -.002 A11 Historic Origin .307 .777 .387 A07 Local Features .430 .717 .243

Prevalent Trend

A17 Environmental Sustainability .317 .201 .847 A16 Fashion .490 .229 .707 A08 Innovative Materials .540 .406 .546

Eigenvalue 12.94 1.49 0. 67

Variance (％) 71.86 8.26 3.69

Cumulative (％) 71.86 80.12 83.81

KMO 0.948

Table 3. The result of principal component analysis

After the renaming, we made a reliability analysis for the results of the questionnaire; the coefficient of Cronbach’s Alpha for all 18 questionnaire items is 0.976. We looked at “Reliability Analysis”, “Corrected Item - Total Correlation” and “Cronbach’s Alpha if Item Deleted” for all items that are included in the three extracted factors. Cronbach’s Alpha for “Design Performance” is 0.975, for “Cultural Elements” 0.925

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and for “Prevalent Trend” 0.871. Except for A15 “Emotion” 0.791 in the “Design Performance” factor, “Cronbach’s Alpha if Item Deleted” for all other Evaluation Indices is lower than the Alpha Coefficient of each single factor, The reliability is above 0.7, indicating that the structure of the questionnaire is reliable.

Analysis of Participant’s Personal Preference Besides the analysis of the design evaluation indices of the products, we also investigated the participant’s degree of personal preference. In part two of the questionnaire, we asked the participants to select 9 product samples they like best and 9 evaluation indices they think are important and rank both of them from 1 to 9. First place counts as 9 points, second 8 points and so on up to the ninth place which counts as 1 point. The product samples and evaluation indices not selected count as 0 points. Table 4 shows the participant’s degree of preference for the 15 product samples and their perceived importance of the 18 evaluation indices.

Table 4. Rank of Participant’s Personal Preference

Ranking of the Personal Preference Product In Table 4 we can see the ranking of the nine products the participants liked best. The ranking from one to nine is P07 “Bamboo - table lamp”, P06 “Tea-Flavored Egg - tea caddy”, P09 “Steamed Dumpling - cruet”, P03 “Domineering - towel rail”, P10 “Recalling the Past - CD player”, P11 “Dragon Claw - bottle opener”, P05 “The Words of Love - wedding gift”, P13 “Jadeite Cabbage - parasol”, and P02 “Beauty of the Mountains - cruet”.

Ranking of the Evaluation Index Importance In Table 4 we can also see the “Design Performance” factors summed up by the factor analysis: The participants ranked A05 “Aesthetic Image Form”, A09 “Product Function”, A13 “Innovative Design”, A10 “Design Quality”, A12 “Unique Idea”, A14 “Texture”, A18 “Overall Presentation” and A06 “Appearance Style” as the eight most important Evaluation Indices (Table 3 and Table 4) of cultural creative products. Hence, “Design Performance” is an important factor for cultural creative products.

CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS With worldwide trend toward cultural and creative industries, Taiwan is also incorporating cultural and creative industry as a key strategy into its economic development to enhance industrial transformation and increase industrial competitiveness. Taiwan has a rich

diversity of cultural characteristics that are not only historically deep and significant, but are also important assets in the development of cultural and creative industries. The results of the factor analysis and the reliability analysis that we used to evaluate the questionnaires suggest that we can extract three common factors that influence the participant’s perception and judgment: “Design Performance”, “Cultural Elements” and “Prevalent Trend”. Furthermore, the “Design Performance” is a most important factor for evaluating cultural creative products.

Currently, design development of cultural creative products is increasingly varied, but to satisfy consumer buying needs, most cultural creative products are reduced to an imitation of form, transfer of patterns or are limited to traditional crafts. Yet design application in cultural creative products is important for product development and innovations that can impart cultural heritage and present culturally distinctive aesthetics that are practical in daily life so that consumers can have new awareness of the characteristics of traditional culture. This research uses the products of the cultural and creative industries that Taiwan has promoted in recent years. With questionnaire surveys of consumer perception and with the research of participants’ design evaluation of cultural creative products, we provide a basis for further research in the areas of follow-up design strategy and marketing.

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