Abstract
Cultural value is widely accepted as the crucial concept in understanding consumer behavior: cultural values influence consumption values, which determine choices of consuming everyday products and services. The objectives of this study were to (a) identify the difference between cultural and consumption values in the Korean fashion industry and (b) to explain the difference using the existing theories introducing fashion system, which are Solomon(2002)'s cultural production model in marketing area and Hamilton(1997)'s fashion system arbiter in clothing area. The qualitative data used to identify cultural values were 160 apparel advertisements listed in a fashion magazine issued in 2002. Utilizing the convenient sampling method, the quantitative data used to identify consumption values were gathered by surveying female university students aged over 20 living in the Seoul metropolitan area. Of 369 returned questionnaires, 255 were used in factor analysis and paired t-test. Cultural value ignored functional aspect of apparel while it was one of the most salient factors for consumption value. With respect to success and fashion orientation factors, cultural value highly appreciated them while they were the least considered factors for consumption value. These implicate that the Korean fashion industry can be explained by Hamilton's macro-level cultural and fashion system arbiters and cultural production model as well. Introducing macro-level perspectives about fashion system, this study encourages researchers to expand their research spectrum from micro-level consumers to macro-level fashion industry, which has long been neglected by the fashion marketing researchers in Korea.