What Matters to Traditional Cultural Products?: Research of Korean Consumers’ Purchasing Preference Based on Post-materialist Theory

Purpose - In today’s increasingly rich material life, people have begun to pay attention to cultural life. In particular, traditional culture that allows people to temporarily escape from their busy lives is receiving more and more attention. In recent years, the trend of combining traditional cultural elements with general products to create cultural and creative products has become popular in some countries. However, there are few types of research on the market of products with these traditional cultural elements. During this article, we decided Korean consumers into materialist and post-materialist groups. Moreover, they are taken as an object to investigate the factors that influence the purchase of traditional cultural and creative products in other countries and examine what matters to materialist and post-materialist consumers to evaluate traditional cultural and creative products. Design/Methodology/Approach - We used a questionnaire survey method instead of an experiment to investigate Korean consumers’ purchase intention by simulating the process of selling two sets of comparative products. Findings - The result shows that materialistic consumers in Korea pay more attention to the functional factors than the cultural factors of traditional cultural products. Post-materialist consumers in Korea pay more attention to cultural factors than the functional factors of traditional cultural products. However, whether beautifully designed is also important in influencing purchase decisions. Research Implications - The author also tried to discuss the impact of research on evaluating traditional cultural creative products on traditional cultural industries and tried to give some practical suggestions.