Exploring types and characteristics of cultural products evoking consumers' pleasures

Designing a product with pleasurable value has become a key requirement during the product development stage. Cultural products can enhance the individual difference and further add an extra value in global market. Understanding cultural content can affect a consumer's emotion/pleasure when observing or using it. Accordingly, to develop a cultural product, designers have to understand types and characteristics of cultural products. This research investigated contemporary cultural products and extracted 14 stimuli for questionnaire survey. The result produced 14 characteristics which can be classified into five types of pleasurable culture products. They are pleasant appearance, playful interaction, cultural content, novelty, and humor/interest. Statistic results show that both male and female have a similar pleasure response towards cultural products. The result also demonstrates that participants showed a higher tendency to purchase a product with pleasure than those without. Furthermore, the result suggests that a product with cultural characteristics may influence users' emotions and that the pleasurable value can affect consumers' decision making when purchasing it.