• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.177-207
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• 2012

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.

• Journal of Applied Tourism Food and Beverage Management and Research
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• v.8
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• pp.89-121
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• 1997

Many of the measures and policies advocated by supply-siders, such as lower taxation, less government intervention, more freedom from restrictive legislation and regulation, and the need for increased productivity can be found in writing the classical economist. Nor is supply-side economics a complete divorcement from Keynesian analysis. In both camps the objectives are the same-high level employment, stable prices and healthy economic growth, the means or suggestions for attaining the objectives, however, differ. Consequently, recommended economic policies and measures are different. keynesians rely primarily on the manipulation of effective demand to increase output and employment and to combat inflation. They assume ample resources to be available in order that supply will respond to demand. The supply-siders emphasize the need to increase savings, investment, productivity and output as a means of increasing income. Supply-siders assume that the increase in income will lead to an increase in effective demand. Keynesians suggest that savings, particularly those not invested, dampen economic activity. Supply-siders hold that savings, or at least an increase in after-tax income, stimulates work effort and provides funds for investment. Perhaps keynesians are guilty of assuming that most savings are not going to be invested, whereas supply-siders may erroneously assume that almost all savings will flow into investment and/ or stimulate work effort. In reality, a middle ground is possible. The supply-siders stress the need to increase supply, but Keynes did not preclude the possibility of increasing economic activity by working through the supply side. According to Keynes' aggregate demand-aggregate supply framework, a decrease in supply will increase output and employment. It must be remembered, however, that Keynes' aggregate supply is really a price. Lowering the price or cost of supply would there by result in higher profit and/ or higher output. This coincides with the viewpoint of supply-siders who want to lower the cost of production via various means for the purpose of increasing supply. Then, too, some of the means, such as tax cuts, tax credits and accelerated depreciation, recommended by suply-siders to increase productivity and output would be favored by Keynesians also as a means of increasing investment, curbing costs, and increasing effective demand. In fact, these very measures were used in the early 1960s in the United State during the years when nagging unemployment was plaguing the economy. Keynesians disagree with the supply-siders' proposals to reduce transfer payments and slow down the process of income redistribution, except in full employment inflationary periods. Keynesians likewise disagree with tax measures that favored business as opposed to individuals and the notion of shifting the base of personal taxation away from income and toward spending. A frequent criticism levied at supply-side economics is that it lacks adequate models and thus far has not been quantified to any great extent. But, it should be remembered that Keynesian economics originally was lacking in models and based on a number of unproved assumptions, such as, the stability of the consumption function with its declining marginal propensity to consume. Just as the economic catastrophe of the great depression of the 1930s paved the way for the application of Keynesian or demand-side policies, perhaps the frustrating and restless conditions of the 1970s and 1980s is an open invitation for the application of supply-side policies. If so, the 1980s and 1990s may prove to be the testing era for the supply-side theories. By the end of 1990s we should have better supply-side models and know much more about the effectiveness of supply-side policies. By that time, also, supply-side thinking may be more crystallized and we will learn whether it is something temporary that will fade away, be widely accepted as the new economics replacing Keynesian demand analysis, or something to be continued but melded or fused with demand management.