소비문화 연구에 대한 관심이 학문적으로는 물론 비즈니스 실무적 접근을 위해 점점 더 커지고 있다. 본 연구는실증적 소비문화 연구를 위하여 소비문화의 차원화를 시도하였다. 소비문화연구의 사적 고찰을 통하여 소비문화는소비재를 매개로 한 의미의 상호작용으로 발현된다는 것을 발견하였으며, 소비문화의 주요한 분석단위로 의미와 상호작용을 활용하고자 하였다. 소비문화는 의미성에 따라 기능과 상징의 범주, 그리고 상호작용성에 따라 개인적 상호작용과 사회적 상호작용의 범주로 구분될 수 있다. 각 범주를 두 개의 축으로 삼아 개인적 기능, 개인적 상징, 사회적 상징, 사회적 기능의 네 개의 소비문화 차원이 도출되었다. 소비문화의 각 차원은 두 개의 하위차원으로 구성되는데, 개인적 기능 차원은 경제성과 검약지향, 개인적 상징 차원은 향유와 자기표현지향, 사회적 상징 차원은 타자승인과 유명선호지향, 그리고 사회적 기능 차원은 친사회와 친환경지향의 하위차원으로 이루어진다.
소비문화 차원의 척도 개발을 위하여 대한민국 서울, 미국 뉴욕, 스웨덴 스톡홀름의 세 도시 20-40대 소비자 각500명 등 총 1,500명을 대상으로 2006년 9월 온라인설문조사를 실시하였다. 연구결과, 소비문화의 차원 측정을위하여 총 20개 문항의 조사도구가 최종적으로 개발되었다. 본 연구는 소비문화의 두 차원인 의미성과 상호작용성에 기반하여 소비문화를 실증적으로 측정할 수 있는 척도를 개발하였다는데 그 의의가 있다. 상징적 의미 범주에속하는 차원간 및 기능적 의미 범주에 속하는 차원간의 상관관계가 각각 매우 높게 나타나 기능과 상징이 소비문화차원화를 위한 명확한 기준임을 확인하였으며 사회적 기능 차원은 상징적 의미 범주와 정적인 관계를 보이고 있어일정 부분 상징적인 의미를 제공하는 것으로 해석된다. 본 연구에서 개발된 척도를 활용하여 향후 각 국가별 소비문화 비교분석 및 그 원인파악에 대한 후속연구가 진행되어야 할 필요성이 제기된다.
It is demanding to understand a consumer culture for academic interests and for the business success as well. This research tried to find dimensions and measures of consumer culture,which enable consumer culture researchers to conduct an empirical cross-cultural comparison study with elaborated tools. To develop an internationally applicable measures, authors selected three representative countries with consideration of the structural differences in economic level and economic system; south Korea, USA, and Sweden. While both USA and Sweden are included in the western culture and have a GDP of 40,000 US dollars, USA adopts a typical free market economy and Sweden is the representative of adjusted market economy. South Korea is originally embodied with the Asian culture and has a GDP of 20,000 US dollars.
Consumer culture is a whole body of consumer lifestyle, which addresses all the consumptionrelated practices in our everyday lives. Through the historical review of consumer culture studies, authors found that the meaning of consumer culture expanded from the functional to the symbolic. While the original nature of consumption is to fulfill functional needs, more focus is putting on the capability to create a symbolic meaning of consumption in the modern consumer society.
In addition, consumption includes social interaction. The meaning of consumption goods have a movable nature and function as media of communication. Social interaction through consumption can be divided into two categories; individual dimension such as hedonic symbol and social dimension such as social distinction. In the modern consumer society, consumption is more getting to imply the relations between peoples. Sustainable consumer culture, which is considered as one of the alternative consumer cultures, functions positively to the society and to the environment as well. Moreover, sustainable consumer culture implies interactions between individual and the society as well as interactions between individuals and the environment.
Authors found that a consumer culture is an interaction of meaning via consumer goods, and herein, a meaning and an interactivity can be the main analysis unit. A consumer culture is classified into two dichotomies by meaning and interactivity; functional-symbolic and individualsocial.
These two dichotomies are combined into a 2×2 cross-classification, and four-celled dimensions of consumer culture are produced; individual-functional, socio-functional, individualsymbolic and socio-symbolic. Each dimension has two sub-dimensions; ‘economical efficiency’and ‘frugality’(individual-functional dimension), ‘fun pursuing’ and ‘self expression’(individualsymbolic dimension), ‘approval by others’ and ‘brand-good preference’(socio-symbolic dimension),and ‘pro-social action’ and ‘pro-environmental action’(socio-functional dimension).
To validate the measure of consumer culture dimensions, an online survey was conducted in September 2006. The respondents were 1,500 consumers in their 20's to 40's of three metropolitan cities in Republic of Korea, USA and Sweden: Seoul, New York, and Stockholm.
As a result of survey, a questionnaire with 20 questions was developed to measure consumer culture dimensions. A consumer culture was apparently dimensionalized by the meaning category, functional-symbolic with a high corelation between the dimensions in symbolic and in functional meaning category separately.
In addition, a socio-functional dimension provides symbolic meaning to consumers with a positive relationship with symbolic meaning category. The symbolic nature of the consumption in the socio-functional dimension gives us an insight for the sustainable consumer culture expansion. If the symbolic meaning of the consumption in the socio-functional dimension can be discovered by country/cultural level, the sustainable consumption practices can be triggered voluntarily by consumers.
This research contributes to the field of empirical cross-cultural consumer research by establishing the dimensions and by developing measures of a consumer culture. The dimensions and measures of consumer culture are expected to be a start point to understand of the each country's consumer culture and compare consumer culture with another one. For further consumer culture study, a phenomenal research can be combined with to explore the origins and the roles of the meaning of consumer goods and the direction of the interaction through the consumption.