Faculty of Business and Design
Master of Business Administration (International)
Understanding Hanfu Cultural Consumption and Non-consumption among Young Generation
Cultural consumption is becoming more and more popular in modern society to meet the needs of consumers’ spiritual world. Most prior cultural consumption researches focus on contemporary cultural consumption perspective. Few study attention has been devoted to understanding traditional cultural consumption in contemporary society and has attempted to analyze the consumption behaviour of the traditional culture. Since the cultural consumption is often context-dependent, this study, therefore, examines traditional cultural consumption which represented by Hanfu cultural consumption, investigating the reasons/factors that influence consumer behaviour of Hanfu culture among the young generation, improving the cultural taste pattern information about traditional culture enthusiasts, and exploring the understanding of the interaction between Hanfu cultural consumption and society. This research was undertaken in the economic centre of China, Shanghai, because Hanfu culture is one of Chinese traditional culture and more popular in this particular city which has a unique cultural setting. This was a qualitative research, data for the study was collected using an open-ended questionnaire survey and interview among young generation.
Results of the study indicate that reasons for Hanfu cultural consumption are derived from five major aspects, ie cultural identification in the group, product uniqueness, social versus individual engagement, personalized purposes, and nostalgic reactions. The results also reveal that low social identity, low usage rate, high barriers to entry, ethics issue of the product designed, bad marketing information specification, purchase models, and high price are the factors that lead young generation to choose to not purchase Hanfu cultural products. And omnivorous cultural consumption becomes the mainstream in today’s society.
This study proves that there is a complicated cycle between Hanfu cultural consumers and society based on consumer culture theory. It offers deeper theoretical and new insights into traditional cultural consumption, especially for Hanfu cultural consumption. This study also has important practical from the perspective of Hanfu cultural community and practitioners, because it brings benefits to understand which area in Hanfu cultural consumption needs to be improved in order to have a better further developing.
Keywords: Hanfu cultural consumption, consumer culture theory, cultural taste pattern
Author: Liang Yan
Publication year: 2018
