Research on the Consumer's Perception of Cultural Product

[[abstract]]As governments from all over the world have sequentially developed cultural and creative industries, the Taiwanese government has also proposed relevant policies to promote cultural and creative industries, thus making cultural product development one of Taiwan’s developmental projects. The designs and discussions of cultural products have become crucial issues since an increasing number of researchers are conducting research on related topics. With the development of modern knowledge, cognitive neuroscience has been widely applied to various fields, such as brainwave research. To understand consumer perception of both general and cultural products, this study used the brainwave measurement method and cultural product perception scale to investigate and compare the physiological and psychological responses, and the relevance of each. The results are as follows: (1) General consumers were investigated in this study. Through the factor analysis approach, six factors were extracted to classify consumer perception of cultural products, namely "charming," "harmonious," "historic," "good-looking," "storytelling," and "plural." Based on these six factors, a perception scale for cultural products was constructed. (2) Cultural perception factors were subject to the product design technique. The simile technique was the most influencing, followed by direct imitation and metaphor, respectively. (3) Consumer perception of cultural products was investigated. The results showed that the perception of cultural products was substantially higher than that of general products, indicating a significant difference between the two products. (4) Key factors influencing consumer perception of cultural products were identified using discriminant analysis, among which "storytelling" had the greatest influence, followed by "historic," "charming," "good-looking," and "plural" in descending order. (5) The brainwave measurement result showed that when compared with general products, cultural products exhibited high values for these three indicators: brain alpha wave (pleasure), attention, and relaxation. This result was greatly attributed to the "historic" and "storytelling" perception of cultural products, which was proved by the statistical result of consumer perception of cultural products. In summary, it can be seen from this comparison that consumer perception of cultural products greatly differed from that of general products. The results of this study also show that the "historic" and "storytelling" product designs can obtain higher evaluation and cultural perception from consumers. In this study, a method for measuring cultural perception was established to measure consumers' subjective feelings on and physiological responses to cultural products. A comparative analysis was subsequently carried out for the study results, which will provide a reference for designers in related product design