Study On Conceptions Of Tea Culture Industry And Consumer Values Concerning Tea Culture Products

In correspondence to the rapid economical growth and with the support of the government, the culture industry in China has shown an enormous expansion since the1990s and it bears a great potential for further development. The tea culture industry is a branch of China's culture industry, which leaves much room for development. However, tea culture industry is considered to be at an initial stagewith regard to its industrial development and research situation.Consumption is the ultimate aim of the production process and the purchase power of consumersis the the core issue in all market activities. The research relating to the consumer behaviour of tea culture products will help to develop tea culture products and make marketing strategies, and it will play an essential role in theadvancement of the tea culture industry. The characteristics of tea culture products and the tea culture itself cannot be separated,i.e., the products of tea culture are main constituent of the tea culture industry and basic category of tea culture. A right understanding of tea culture products and characteristics of the tea culture industry is therefore a major issue in discussing consumer behavior in teaculture.Discussedthe conceptions of culture industry, resources and products of tea culture to reveal the factors relating to the perception and faith of tea culture products. Firstly, the study presented the definitions of tea culture industry, tea culture commodities and tea culture resources, and revealedthe characteristics relating to tea culture industry. Based on the theory of means-end chains (MEC) and by means of soft-laddering,we further discussed with30consumerswith close relating to famous-teas, tea houses and tea culture travel and classified the related factors at three levels, i.e., attributes, consequences and values.There were30factors for famous teas (11attributes,11consequences,8values),35factors for tea houses (14attributes,13consequences,8values) and32factors for tea culture travels (13attributes,11consequences,8values). On the basis of the structural... relations between these factors, a hierarchical value map (HVM) was proposed in this study.A pleasant mood was was the common target of consumers of famous teas, tea houses and tea culture travel products. Besides finding some delightness through purchasing the products of tea culture, the consumers sought extra diverse benefits such as comparative benefit to other buyings. There were many ways leading to the their final values. Moreover,the consumers paid attention to the price when purchasing these tea culture products. They perceived the economic value of the product, either when the purchasedproduct met their expectations or when a product possessedextra attributes of other products except the onesoriginally ascribed to it.The results of this study provide references for the further development of tea culture products and marketing strategies. In addition, I hope that the study will be of interesting for the theoretical research on tea culture industry, as well as for the research on tea culture resources and attributes of tea culture products, and also for the research on consumer behavior which is related to tea culture products in the future.