Modern people desire to find meaning in life through realizing one’s own values and have become to consider this as an important factor of happiness. People try to design their lives as actively as possible in the pursuit of achieving ultimate happi...
Modern people desire to find meaning in life through realizing one’s own values and have become to consider this as an important factor of happiness. People try to design their lives as actively as possible in the pursuit of achieving ultimate happiness and this behavior is influencing the perception of consumption as well. As consumers today regard value fulfillment through consumption to be the highest of priorities, value consumption, a consuming pattern based on values is being pursued.
The change in values of modern people who regard value importantly has led to avoiding existing empty formalities in the Korean wedding cultures and the desire to focus on the true values of marriage. Consequently, ‘wedding cultures of value consumption’, which aims to realize self-value and emphasize the true meaning of weddings is spreading. This especially applies to wedding dresses since wedding dresses, as a costume with special meaning of being the bride’s dress, act as an important consumption factor where the subjective satisfaction of the bride is the most important. Hence, the demands for wedding dress designs that reflect the values satisfying the needs of the consumers are continuously increasing, and the domestic wedding dress market is quickly changing and expanding in ways of being divided and more specialized. However, the current conditions have somewhat difficulties in discovering and reflecting specific design factors in design development in accordance with the inner values of the consumers.
Therefore, this study intends to grasp the types of value consumption and values demanded in wedding dresses in accordance with wedding cultures of value consumption through a consumer oriented perspective, and to research the types of design factors the consumers’ abstract values ultimately derive into by examining the relations with design factors of actual wedding dresses. The purpose of this study is to extract specific design factors of wedding dresses reflecting values and develope a wedding dress design of wedding cultures based on value consumption. Also, this study provides basic data for proposing a design for the development of high value wedding dresses specialized in the domestic wedding industry.
In order to fulfill these purposes, the current status of domestic wedding cultures and the concept and conditions of value consumption were examined. And the concept and the characteristics of wedding cultures of value consumption was academically studied. Also, the needs for studies on the development of wedding dress design in value consumption wedding cultures were examined by researching wedding dress concepts and design factors and the current status of the wedding dress market. This study derived the values of wedding dresses demanded in accordance with the types of value consumption of wedding cultures based on value consumption through an in-depth interview with a consumer group and expert group, and comprehensively discussed the types of design factor the inner values of the consumers form into, through an in-depth analysis of the relations between the design factors of actual wedding dresses. Furthermore, a wedding dress design was developed that reflects the values satisfying the needs of the consumers of wedding cultures of value consumption based on the wedding dress designs derived from the results.
As a result, the following conclusions were made.
First, modern people pursue value consumption in the form of reasonable and solid consumption based on values. With this trend reaching the wedding cultures in Korea, this has been an opportunity for an expansion of the wedding cultures of value consumption that aims to realize the consumers’ values through marriage. Wedding dresses especially reflect the value consuming tendency and is quickly rising as a high value added product. Accordingly, the needs for developing a wedding dress design capable of realizing the values of the consumers is increasing and the wedding industry targets to ensure a differentiated competitive edge through value creation. However, since there exists difficulties in reflecting the abstract values of the consumers into specific design factors, the importance of developing wedding dress designs reflecting such values is increasing based on an in-depth understanding of the tendency of the consumers value consumption.
Secondly, prior to the development of wedding dress designs in wedding cultures of value consumption, an in-depth interview was carried out on a total of 14 people consisted of 7 consumers and 7 experts in order to conduct an empirical analysis on the values and design factors of wedding dresses demanded in accordance with the tendencies of value consumption. The interview results showed that the types of wedding cultures based on value consumption were categorized into emotional value consumption and practical value consumption. The values of wedding dresses demanded by the wedding cultures of value consumption were aesthetic value, symbolic value, economic value, and functional value. The results showed that the design factors of wedding dresses to reflect aesthetic values required creativity and decorativeness, and the design factors to reflect symbolic values required scarcity and high quality level. Wedding dress design factors to reflect economic values were shown to require simplicity and efficiency while design factors to reflect functional values were shown to require activeness and usability. The study found out that values and wedding dress design factors are closely related, and that the values influence design factors such as styles, silhouettes, fabrics, details, etc, which leads to different visual expressions. Accordingly, a relationship between the values and design factors as well as specific design factors were derived which were reflected in the development of actual wedding dress designs.
Thirdly, a wedding dress design was planned and developed that reflects the values satisfying the needs of the consumers, based on the contents and characteristics of the design factors related to the values of the wedding dresses demanded in the wedding cultures of value consumption derived from the results of the empirical research. A design considering both emotional values and practical values was drawn out under the concept of ‘Blooming Bride’, which resulted in a total of 4 wedding dress designs.
This study can be utilized as a basic source of data for developing wedding dress designs that can meet the tendencies of the value consumption of the consumers in accordance with the expansion of the wedding cultures based on value consumption. This study is expected to help future studies on wedding dress designs considering the values of the consumers, and to promotes the vitalization of the domestic wedding dress market through the development of wedding dress designs that can effectively enhance consumer satisfaction in accordance with value realization.