A Study on Consumer Perception and Preference of

Cultural Creative Products

1,3

Chi-Hsien Hsu1, Jung-Yu Lin2, Rungtai Lin3

2

Graduate 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
1
assah16@gmail.com, 3rtlin@ntua.edu.tw

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
Museums 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

Department of Crafts & Design, National Taiwan

University of Arts, Taiwan
No. 59, Sec. 1, Daguan Rd., Banciao District, New
Taipei City 22058, Taiwan
2
s60583@gmail.com

core competency. Its 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

221

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 eLearning 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 Taiwans
diverse and rich digital archives that invigorate Taiwans
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
Taiwans 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
museums 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 ALESSIs
international retail stores, the National Palace Museum
can promote its objects to international markets by
giving them a taste of modern design and fashion.

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
Design Related
Communication
Management
Related
Arts and
Humanities
Related
Total

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.

Participants
Female Sub-total
38
57

Male
19

Excluded
5

27

41

68

12

40

52

58

119

177

13

Table 1. Participants in the questionnaire survey

Cultural Products
P01

P02

Pinban
Boat
handbag

Beauty of
the
Mountains
cruet

P03

Domineering
towel rail

Local Products

P04

Grandmother's
Fashion
brooch

P05

The Words
of Love
wedding gift

P06

P07

P08

P09

P10

TeaFlavored
Egg tea
caddy

Bamboo
table lamp

Rush chair

Steamed
Dumpling
cruet

Recalling
the Past CD
player

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

Innovative Products

Table 2. Three different categories of product samples

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

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

223

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.

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 participants 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 Bartletts 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
Bartletts 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

Design
Performance

Cultural
Elements

Prevalent
Trend

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

Factor loadings
Factor
1
.795

Factor
2
.392

Factor
3
.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

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

A17 Environmental Sustainability

.317

.201

.847

A16 Fashion
A08 Innovative Materials

.490
.540

.229
.406

.707
.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

A12 Unique Idea

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.

Evaluation Index

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
Cronbachs Alpha for all 18 questionnaire items is
0.976. We looked at Reliability Analysis, Corrected
Item - Total Correlation and Cronbachs Alpha if Item
Deleted for all items that are included in the three
extracted factors. Cronbachs Alpha for Design
Performance is 0.975, for Cultural Elements 0.925

224

and for Prevalent Trend 0.871. Except for A15

Emotion 0.791 in the Design Performance factor,
Cronbachs 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 Participants Personal Preference

Besides the analysis of the design evaluation indices of

the products, we also investigated the participants
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 participants degree
of preference for the 15 product samples and their
perceived importance of the 18 evaluation indices.

Table 4. Rank of Participants 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 TeaFlavored 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 participants 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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