The Formation and Connotation of Culture and Cultural Values
Culture refers to the process that people as the subject adapt, utilize and transform the world as the object through social practice activities and gradually realize their own values. The emergence and development of any culture can not be separated from specific social, historical and natural conditions. As Marx said, man is the result of interaction between natural conditions and social conditions, natural conditions are necessary conditions and social conditions are special conditions. As a product of human society, culture is also produced in this way.
China, as an ancient civilization, has a profound and profound culture for thousands of years. The wide spread and development of the academic viewpoints of Confucianism, France and Taoism have made outstanding contributions to Chinese civilization. In particular, Confucianism has a far-reaching impact on the cultural development of China, profoundly affecting everyone's behavior and forming the traditional virtues and social consciousness of the Chinese nation.
China's culture has many distinctive features, among which Zhang Dainian summed up the characteristics of China's culture with four representative words: harmony between man and nature, people-oriented, vigorous and self-reliant, and harmony is precious (these are still the main lines of China culture). In recent years, the study of China culture has added some new contents to the generalization of China's cultural characteristics, including: paying attention to the spirit of humanism, rather than attaching to theological dogma like western culture; Pay attention to harmony and the doctrine of the mean, that is, the doctrine of the mean thinking, rather than pursuing separation and confrontation like western culture; Full of fun and satisfaction, not as adventurous and exciting as western culture. Therefore, China's cultural characteristics can be summarized as follows: moral cultivation is the foundation of the country, the doctrine of the mean is the way to live, farming is the method of heirloom, Confucian classics is the study of scholarship, the value orientation is the unity of righteousness and benefit, and the way of thinking is tacit.
Under the accumulation and gestation of China characteristic culture for thousands of years, China has formed a unique cultural value system (the latest cultural value is "eight honors and eight disgraces" proposed by General Secretary Hu Jintao). Cultural values refer to people's persistent belief in specific behavior patterns and the meaning of life, and a relatively stable preference and aversion attitude in the process of treating things. Cultural values are gradually formed through continuous learning and continuous abstraction and conceptualization of one's own direct and indirect experiences, and once such values are formed, they will have a great impact on one's life and behavior. Cultural values have a very important influence on behavior, which can be said to be a person's potential code of conduct, and cultural values occupy a core position in the personal cognitive system. Therefore, if we further study a specific behavior-consumption behavior, we can clearly find that under the guidance of these cultural value systems, China's characteristic consumption behavior has also been formed, such as frugality, harmony-oriented, pragmatic consumption concept and so on.
It is worth pointing out and attracting attention that culture is acquired culture. Although the influence of traditional culture has penetrated into our hearts, it does not mean that it cannot be changed. Except the core cultural values at the core, which can't or are difficult to change, others can be easily changed through learning. This change is manifested in obvious cultural change in modern society, which inevitably requires the establishment of a new value system. Every society has core cultural values, which will be reflected, spread and continued in schools, families, enterprises and social organizations, and the core cultural values are more stable and difficult to change. However, they will all change with the changes of the times. This is mainly manifested in the development of society, the continuous improvement of people's education level and the deepening of people's understanding; Traditional narrow cultural values are replaced by multi-dimensional cultural values; The traditional values of group supremacy are gradually changing to the new values of unity of group and individual; The traditional cultural values that suppress personal needs and belittle self-worth are changing to the new values that unify self-worth and social value; The traditional cultural values with a single value orientation have gradually changed into cultural values with multiple values orientations.
There have always been different views on the division of cultural dimensions. The way of dividing dimensions abroad is represented by five dimensions of hofstede culture, namely collectivism and individualism, uncertainty avoidance, power distance, male and female, long-term and short-term orientation. As far as China is concerned, through literature research and actual textual research, the dimensions of China's cultural values mainly include collectivism and individualism, man and the universe, uncertainty avoidance, long-term and short-term orientation, and orientation towards distance and time. According to these six dimensions, China's cultural values can be summarized as collectivism, fatalism, high uncertainty avoidance, long-term orientation, high power distance and past orientation.
The Influence of Cultural Values on Consumer Behavior
Various elements of culture, such as values, material culture, customs and norms. , have their own influence on consumer behavior. Consumers have their own values at every stage, from the time when they generate consumer demand, to the time when they meet the demand for product information in the future, to the time when they make choices and judgments among various products, make purchase decisions and after-sales evaluation. This paper mainly discusses the role of cultural values.
For example, Harley-Davidson motorcycles, looking at all consumers of Harley-Davidson motorcycles, can find a very interesting phenomenon. Although these consumers come from different places and speak different languages, their behaviors have many similarities, such as: * * * the same activity (motorcycle party), the same clothes (jeans, black boots, T-shirts, black leather jackets), and the same identity (Harley car owners' group, Holey). Through in-depth contact with Harley motorcycle owners, we can understand the social structure, cultural values and behavior of HOG members and adapt to the social norms, clothing habits and behavior of the group. In this process, we can find that the motto of Harley owners is "Life lies in riding, and riding is life", which profoundly and truly reflects the lifestyle of HOG members, and HOG is an ideal place for Harley motorcycle enthusiasts. There, they can temporarily get rid of ordinary and vulgar daily life, so as to enjoy a constantly changing and wonderful life. HOG members attach great importance to spiritual experience, really close to nature, and feel the fast movement brought by motorcycles and the happiness after experiencing risks. The core cultural value of Harley motorcycle owners is personal freedom. In their eyes, Harley, a two-wheeled motorcycle, has become a symbol of freedom, which is fully reflected by the eagle spreading its wings in Harley's logo. Harley-Davidson motorcycle owners are divided into different groups according to their age and occupation, but it is very important that they have the same cultural values.
From the example of Harley-Davidson, we can clearly find that there is a close relationship between consumers' cultural values, consumption results and products and services, which is the so-called destination chain theory put forward by guttmann. According to this theory, cultural values affect consumers' judgment on the importance of product attributes, and then affect consumers' evaluation and purchase behavior of products. These three are an organic whole, forming a causal chain, that is, cultural values determine consumption results, consumption results determine product attributes, and consumers' consumption of products reflects consumers' cultural values. Obviously, cultural values are the dominant factor in this process.
Combining guttmann's destination chain theory with the previously defined six dimensions of China's cultural values can guide the marketing strategy in real life.
Collectivism values-consistency-consistency of product and group characteristics. Collectivism values emphasize the harmony and interdependence of collective interests and groups. Such people require conformity, and the product attributes must conform to the * * * characteristics of the consumer reference group. It guides enterprises to make products have mass consumption as much as possible, reduce product publicity, choose well-known sales channels, and make the efficacy of products related to the group norms of target consumer groups, give play to their herd mentality, and appropriately assist with price reduction or prize sales to create a hot-selling situation and encourage more people to follow suit.
Fatal values-fate-possibility of products. Fatal values reflect a natural psychological pursuit, and consumers with such values demand high availability of products. It guides enterprises not to measure customer satisfaction by the number of customer complaints, but to adopt indicators that can truly reflect their satisfaction, and manufacturers should pay special attention to the daily habits of such consumers, so that their products can be fully exposed to consumers as much as possible, and at the same time, they should pay close attention to the changing proportion of new and old customers, understand the reasons for the changes in time and solve problems.
High uncertainty avoids values-risk aversion-channel and product safety. Consumers with high uncertainty aversion value have higher requirements for the safety of products and channels, and their consumption behavior belongs to risk aversion. They tend to be content, conservative in consumption, reduce the purchase risk and eliminate risk concerns. Guide enterprises to reduce the risk of consumers as much as possible, increase the safety of their consumption, eliminate the asymmetry of information, give consumers the opportunity to experience it personally as much as possible, choose traditional channels such as shopping malls and supermarkets, pay attention to public opinion such as forums, cultivate good customer relations, and deal with customer dissatisfaction in time.
Long-term oriented values-pragmatism-functional attributes and cost performance. Long-term oriented values Consumers attach great importance to the functional value and cost performance of products. Guide enterprises to pay attention to the quality and performance of products, adopt low-cost sales, and try to choose a sales method that reduces the terminal price.
High power distance value-symbol-brand and status requirements. High Power Distance Values Consumers pay attention to the pursuit of brand, identity and status, and need to reflect their value preference for status and meet their psychological needs for respect. In other words, what they do is symbolic consumption, through which they get a social psychological hint and win the affirmation and respect of society and individuals. Guiding enterprises to devote themselves to brand strategy, building brands, adopting new channels, improving services, providing good quality, holding concerts and other new promotion methods can attract such consumers.
The past-oriented values, loyalty and familiarity with products and brands, reflect the nostalgia and emotional pursuit of China people. Consumers value the familiarity of products and brands more. Familiar brand attributes can stimulate consumers' emotional motivation, bring a sense of security, meet consumers' emotional needs, and thus form loyal consumer behavior. Guide enterprises to pay attention to some feedback activities, develop series products, maintain existing brands and strengthen the memory of products in customers' minds.
From the above six purpose chains, we can clearly see the influence of cultural values on consumer behavior, which has an effect on consumer behavior in an internalized form. In marketing, enterprises must attach importance to this intrinsic value, adopt different marketing strategies for different consumer groups, make full use of the causal chain reflected by this purpose chain, and integrate theory with practice.
The reaction of consumption to cultural values
Recent research has paid more and more attention to the phenomenon that people buy a product not only because of its high value, but also because of the cultural symbol value behind it. In other words, the cultural symbols represented by products affect consumers' consumption behavior. When the cultural symbols represented by products are consistent with the cultural values of consumers, consumers will have a higher judgment on a product and a greater willingness to buy. To give a popular example, people's consumption of diamond rings. Why does diamond ring become a favorite consumer product of contemporary couples? Diamond ring is not only more beautiful than other rings, but more importantly, I think it embodies a special culture that can represent love based on the unique natural attributes (luster, hardness and scarcity) and cultural attributes (single-minded and loyal love) of diamonds. Contemporary lovers' cultural values about love are fully reflected in the cultural symbols of diamond rings, which leads to their preference for diamond rings. Consumer behavior is not only limited to the economic behavior of consuming things, but also transformed into the consumption economic behavior with the unique significance reflected by the sensibility and image of things. This kind of example can be seen everywhere in daily life (advertising is the most typical). For example, people often associate cars with successful and chic white-collar workers, mobile phones with MP3 players and lovers' love details, drinks with freshness, health and vitality, wine with friendship, sporting goods with the spirit of never giving up and being omnipotent. Consumption and cultural symbols Consumption and culture are always linked. Material production can never be separated from a specific purpose, that is, what goods are used for and what they mean to people. With the continuous enrichment and complexity of human life world, people's purposes and meanings are becoming more and more diversified and detailed, so that more and more articles with cultural attributes can meet people's psychological needs. The appearance of these consumption patterns shows that people are not only consuming materials, but also consuming culture. Culture enters the field of consumption everywhere, and cultural values become the decisive factor of consumption in a sense.