The Effects of Consumer Value Cognition on Benefits and Attributes of Culture-Art Products

문화예술상품 소비자의 가치인식이 추구혜택과 상품속성에 미치는 영향

Today's consumers perceive consumption as a representation of themselves. It is not simply an act that fulfills a consumer's physical and practical needs. Even in terms of life quality, consumers increasingly want to achieve an emotional and sensible experience through consumption. Consumers now make decisions based on their need to express their position in relation to other people, pursue emotional satisfaction, and try to improve the quality of life. Culture-art products that meet such internal and external demands of consumers have made significant improvements in both quantity and quality, because of the social interest and policy support. The recognition of personal and social values of culture and arts has brought about interest in and need for culture-art products. Businesses have agilely embraced such change and actively implemented various marketing strategies utilizing culture and arts. For example, businesses began to sponsor artists who produce culture-art products while building facilities for cultural and art performances or exhibitions. Businesses have also provided performances and exhibitions free-of-charge or at affordable prices. As a result, the supply in the market has started to exceed its demand as is often the case in many of other markets. However, such imbalance has occurred not because of over-supply but because of a lack of demand. Given these circumstances, the government and culture and art related organizations, which had mainly concentrated on the supply side, started to recognize the importance of creating personal and social values in culture and arts. As a result, the government and various organizations are now creating various strategies that include policy measures to achieve their new found goal. Unfortunately however, such efforts are not meeting the expectations. Focusing on above-mentioned circumstances and problems, this study aims to find measures to create demand for culture-art products in the internal conditions of those who consume culture-art products. In other words, given that the demand for culture-art products has not increased despite all external conditions to encourage consumption, this study aims to find the reasons in consumers' value judgment on culture-art products. Though there were recent studies on culture-art products that applied consumer behavior on marketing theories, most of them focused on peripheral aspects such as people's motivation for or satisfaction from watching culture-art events. Hence, there is a need to understand what kind of value consumers perceive from culture-art products and how such value cognition leads to consumption in a comprehensive manner. This study acts as follow-up to a separate study entitled "Qualitative Study about Value Cognition and Benefits of Consumer on Culture-Art Products". The current study aims to extend practical implications that enhance the effectiveness of marketing strategies among the producing and policy agencies in the industry. The purpose of this study is to investigate dimensions of value cognition, benefits and attributes of culture-art products, and identify the effects of consumer value cognition on benefits and attributes. The questionnaire was developed based on the conceptual structure of qualitative research and previous researches. It was composed of value cognition, benefits, attributes of culture-art products and demographic variables. This survey was conducted on-line and off-line among a total of 662 persons ranging from their teens to their 50's who were living in Seoul, Gyeonggi-do, various metropolitan cities, and small and medium-sized cities. The data collected was analyzed by factor analysis and path analysis using SPSS WIN 18.0 and AMOS 16.0. This empirical study found that the dimensions of value cognition of culture-art products were categorized into personal goods, aesthetic goods and public property. This shows that the consumers perceive culture-art products as products that are worthy enough to pay the costs not just for personal benefits but also for their social values. Also the formation of value cognition for culture-art products requires special conditions unlike that for physical consumer goods and services, which simply require marketing stimuli. The dimensions of benefits pursued by consuming culture-art products were found to be composed of four types - pursuit of aesthetic benefits, pursuit of actual benefits, pursuit of emotional benefits, and pursuit of conspicuous character. This result implies that people consume culture-art products not just to pursue pleasure from emotional and intelligent satisfaction as well as social relations, but also to seek the needs and benefits embodied at a social level. The dimensions of attributes of culture-art products had seven different factors, - environmental, price, evaluation, people, artwork, composition, and personal relations - which is plentiful. This is because the attributes of culture-art products are very complicated compared to other consumer goods or services. Since culture-art products include not just cultural or artistic works but also all physical, human, environmental, and systemic elements of the products in a comprehensive manner, consumers perceive everything they experience in the process of consuming culture-art products as part of the products. The dimensions of value cognition was found to affect attributes of the products, mostly using pursued benefits as a mediating factors. This result is consistent with the result of qualitative research, and proves that applying the means-end chain theory in the reverse direction is reasonable. The result can be interpreted that consumers' value cognitions for culture-art products turns into actual benefits leading to consumers' decisions. Furthermore, this result reveals that when consumers choose culture-art products, they take into account the attributes of culture-art products depending on the benefits they pursue. These results confirm that despite their conceptual and abstract attributes, culture-art products have values that contribute to actual benefits for individual consumers and society. Hence, value cognition generates benefits to be pursued and this in turn affects the consumers' choices of attributes on products. Based on the conceptual structure of consumers' value cognitions on culture-art products and its dimensions, it is possible to find detailed methods to provide opportunities for education and training to form and reinforce positive value cognition on culture-art products. And through those methods, it will be possible to develop attributes of culture-art products according to the dimensions of pursued benefits, and allow conceptual products become the subject to valuable consumption in real life. These results provide theoretical understanding of consumer behavior in culture marketing and useful information to culture-art producers, companies that use culture and art, and government agencies that use culture-art as a mean to improve the public perception of quality of life. As a follow up on this study, there should be experimental studies that can develop criteria visualizing the demands of consumers who purchase culture-art products and identify their detailed attributes. Studies that compare characteristics of different areas within the culture-art product category and in-depth studies on a specific area or genre will also be needed. In order to develop marketing strategies for culture-art products, studies on the formation and reinforcement of positive value cognition on culture-art products and education for the development of consumer demand as well as on the development and differentiation of attributes of culture-art products depending on types of consumer groups should also follow.

문화예술상품은 일반 소비재와 달리 소비자의 가치인식에 따라 중요한 소비의 대상이 되기도 하고 그렇지 못할 수도 있는 특별한 상품이다. 물질적 소비재나 서비스 상품은 상품속성이 주는 물질적 및 비물질적 혜택을 상정하여 상품을 개발하고 그에 따른 마케팅전략을 수립하는 것이 효과적일 수 있다. 그러나 문화예술상품 소비는 소비자의 경험과 교육 등에 의해 형성된 문화예술에 대한 가치인식에 따라 소비추구혜택이 달라질 수 있고, 가치인식과 추구혜택은 문화예술상품의 속성을 선택하는 기준에 영향을 미칠 수 있을 것이다. 본 연구는 '문화예술상품에 대한 가치인식과 추구혜택에 관한 질적 연구'의 후속연구로서 질적 연구에서 나타난 개념구조를 바탕으로 문화예술상품에 대한 소비자의 가치인식 및 추구혜택과 상품속성의 하위차원을 규명하고, 수단-목적 사슬이론을 역으로 적용하여 문화예술상품에 대한 소비자의 가치인식이 추구혜택과 상품속성에 미치는 영향을 규명하고자 하였다. 그리하여 문화예술상품 생산 및 문화예술 정책기관과 문화예술을 활용하는 기업의 문화마케팅의 효율성을 제고하기 위한 실무적 시사점을 제시하고자 실시되었다. 10대 이상 50대 남녀 662명을 대상으로 자료를 수집하고 요인분석과 경로분석을 실시하였다. 예술상품에 대한 소비자의 가치인식과 추구혜택의 하위차원은 질적 연구 결과와 유사하게 나타났으며, 가치인식은 대부분 추구혜택을 매개로 하여 상품속성에 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타나 질적 연구결과와 마찬가지로 수단-목적사슬을 역방향으로 적용하는 것이 타당함을 입증하였다. 즉, 문화예술상품에 대한 소비자의 가치인식이 실제적 편익으로 구체화되고, 소비자는 이러한 추구혜택에 따라 상품속성의 중요도를 고려하여 구매의사를 결정하는 것으로 볼 수 있다. 본 연구는 문화예술상품에 대한 소비자의 가치인식을 긍정적으로 형성·강화시키는 것이 가장 중요한 소비 촉진 요인임을 입증하였으며, 문화예술상품 생산기관에서 소비자 중심의 상품개발과 기업의 효율적인 문화예술마케팅 전략을 개발하기 위한 소비자 정보와 실무적 시사점을 제시하였다. 또한 본 연구 결과는 국민의 삶의 질을 향상시키고자 하는 국가기관의 정책 수립을 위한 유용한 정보로 활용될 수 있을 것이다.