投稿類別 : 英文寫作類 篇名 : The Influence of K-pop and K-beauty Industry on Taipei Senior High School Students Aesthetic Standards 作者 : 郭宥辰 臺北市立西松高級中學 二年忠班李芊芊 臺北市立西松高級中學 二年忠班 指導老師 : 王祝華老師
I. Introduction I.1. Motivation of the Study These years, Korean pop culture has spread rapidly all over the world, including Taiwan. Korean style restaurants like Dakgalbi (spicy fried chicken with rice cake and vegetables), tofu pot, and Bibimbap (rice topped with seasoned vegetables and chili pepper paste), have sprung up in the busiest areas of the cities; reports about Korean fashion brands stationing in Taiwan have extensive coverage in newspapers, magazines, and social media websites. According to the survey done by the customer panel of Kantar Worldpanel in 2016, four out of five most growing brands in the beauty market are from Korea. Moreover, Korean brands hold 8% of the sales volume in cosmetics worldwide. On our way to school, we can even see lots of ads on buses or on the streets, on which beauty products are endorsed by Korean pop stars, encouraging binge watchers and fans to purchase and imitate. All of the phenomena above make us wonder just how and how much the dissemination of K-pop have influenced the aesthetics of high school students in Taiwan. I.2 Purpose of the Study This paper aims to analyze how and why Korean Pop culture (K-pop) has been able to lead the trend in fashion and market their entertainment products internationally. Furthermore, we would like to know whether K-pop influences the aesthetic point of views of teenagers in Taipei and if so, to what extent are they influenced by K-pop. I.3 Research Questions 1. What are the marketing strategies Korean fashion and entertainment industry use to boost market share 2. How K-pop influenced fashion internationally 3. To what degree has K-beauty influenced senior high school students in Taipei aesthetically I.4 Methods Our research flowchart is as follows: literature review questionnaire design distribute questionnaires analyze results Picture 1: The Research Flowchart 1
II. Thesis II.1. Definition of Aesthetic Standards According to Kant s theory, aesthetics refers to the faculty of judgment that enables us to have experience of beauty. Therefore, it often varies from person to person, for different thoughts, backgrounds, hobbies or interests contribute to different aesthetic standards. Teenagers aesthetics, for example, are most susceptible to change due to exposure and peer influence. The infiltration of group aesthetic awareness and individual aesthetic psychology form one s aesthetic individuality, and show a wide variety of aesthetic characteristics. Moreover, while aesthetic feelings own differences, they also own commonality. ( 朱志榮, 2011) This may explain why teenagers, while seeking individuality and self-expression, may choose to conform to some standards widely accepted by their peers. In fact, teenagers tend to pay attention to topics or issues of common interest, assimilating their system of values, their way of thinking, and their aesthetic standards into one that are accepted and recognized by their peers. In addition, mass media, multimedia, communication media, and social media have helped reinforce those aesthetic standards because before being propagated to the public, the information of the media has to be packaged ( 江顯東, 2007) so as to successfully grasp the attention of the target group. With the fast rate at which social media spread the deliberate packaging, it is no wonder that teenagers share a great similarity in their taste in fashion and beauty. ( 吳明燁, 1999) II. 2. The Rise of K-pop Since the turn of the twenty-first century, Korean pop culture has started to flourish all over the world. In 2002, Boa s album Listen to My Heart topped the Oricon chart, becoming the first ever Korean singer to own a million-sale album in Japan. In the same year, twenty one TV channels in China broadcasted the Korean drama Autumn in My Heart, while Winter Sonata became a great hit in Japan, making sales volume that was over 3.5 million dollars. Not only drama has made its way to the world stage. In the same year, TVXQ! and SS501 began gaining recognition across Asia. From then on, there is no stopping for Korean groups such as Super Junior and Bigbang to become popular among many young people, and started to own largescale fans in some western countries in South America and Europe. Until the end of 2011, Korean pop music has reached 23 billion hits on YouTube. In 2012, Psy s single Gangnam Style succeeded both economically and culturally. It beat Justin Bieber s Baby and became the most watched video ever on YouTube and the first ever Korean single that made over a million sales in England. This sensational phenomenon that sweeps across the globe is often referred to as Korean wave. II. 3. The Marketing Strategies of Korean Brands Korean wave doesn t intend to stop by only taking over the entertainment industry. Following the success of K-pop, Korean beauty industry has also gained a place in the world. Apart from the quality, it has also taken advantage of the popularity of K-pop as well as very good marketing strategies to put itself on the world map. A. Active Usage of Social Media As the social media permeate all aspects of a teenager s life, fashion and beauty brands work hand in hand with the entertainment companies to gain exposure through the Internet. Korean entertainment companies use websites like YouTube, Twitter, and 2
Facebook to broadcast and sell K-pop and K-dramas across the globe. In addition, idols use online texting and media information, as well as live webcasts to interact with fans directly. For example, In 2015, K-pop fashion icon G-Dragon was the only Korean celebrity who was invited by Karl Lagerfeld, the chief designer of Chanel, to the Chanel couture fashion show in Paris. (Liberty Times, 2015) Being the first Asian artist to reach a billion followers on Instagram, G-Dragon posts pictures about his work, friends, and wardrobe daily, which allow his followers to pay close attention to or mimic his style with ease. Likewise, K-pop idols who are famous for their unique fashion styles, like Sooyoung from Girls Generation, Key from SHINee, post pictures of the gifts they get from fashion brands on their Instagram, which is a way to help the brands promote their products. In this way, K- pop and fashion are infiltrated into the teenage minds. B. Celebrity Endorsements Another strategy that Korean make-up and clothing brands use to successfully capture the teenage eye is to collaborate with different celebrities, signing endorsement contracts with popular idols. For example, There was an enormous supply shortage of coral red lipsticks in China when the South Korean series My Love from the Star, starring Jun Ji-hyun, stirred up a craze for wearing coral red lipstick in the show. (China Daily Asia, 2015) Actually, Korean beauty brands make the most of this strategy. As Fedorenko stated in his article in 2014, In the first decade of this century, 70-75% of Korean ads featured celebrities (Fedorenko 2014, p. 357). Compared to the roughly 25% of advertisement with celebrities in them in America, this sums up to about 200% more celebrity endorsement in South Korean (Fedorenko 2011, p. 103). The result is of course astonishing. Celebrity endorsements have certainly become the most effective and efficient strategy that guarantee revenues and exposure. C. Increase the Market Share Besides thinking globally, Korean beauty industry also thinks timelessly. Take Amore Pacific, the biggest cosmetics conglomerate in Korea, for example. It owns more than twenty different brands, with each one of them aiming at customers of different ages covers from low-end to high-end markets, capturing teenage, mature, and elderly customers. ( 王曉玟, 2011) Other companies appeals to individualism. For instance, Etude House attracts teenage girls through their pink packaging; Innisfree ulilizes natural ingredients as their unique selling point; Sulwhasoo in turn boasts the use of a combination of typical Korean ingredients such as ginseng and green tea to create an exotic and distinctive eastern-style collection of products, gaining a lot of attention of western consumers. D. Increase Public visibility and Interest To compete against well-known brands that have occupied the market share for decades, many Korean brands take a more direct approach by distributing free sample packs on the streets to gain more attention upon entering new markets encouraging them to experience, compare and test the products. A variety of marketing promotions, such as buy one get one free, membership discount, or boxed gift sets are launched during holidays, summer and winter vacations, end-of-season sales, and back-to-school seasons. What s more, cosmetics brands often cooperate with cartoon and comic artists to launch products jointly. For instance, The Face Shop co-branded Disney to release a series of makeup products with some of the most popular Disney s characters like Mickey Mouse, Winniethe-Pooh, and Michael Wazowski printed on them, which successfully gained public attention and became a big hit. 3
II.4. Questionnaire Since Korean wave has taken the world by storm, we wonder to what extent it affects the youths in Taipei in terms of aesthetics and consumption behavior. With these questions in mind, we set out to design an online questionnaire targeted at the senior high school students in Taipei, which enables us to analyze the data more efficiently. We have also made sure the respondents include public, private and vocational schools. II.4.1. Designing the Questionnaire We divided the questionnaire into three parts. The first part of the questionnaire consists of seven questions, with which we aim to examine the amount of attention the respondents pay to K- pop and how willing they are to purchase products. In the second part, from the eighth to the fifteenth questions, we examine whether the participants are influenced by K-pop when it comes to their aesthetic standards on makeup and clothing styles. Lastly, in the third part, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth questions, we focus on finding out the conditions that affect female participants decisions while choosing cosmetics. In order to facilitate the respondents in choosing from different styles of clothing and makeup that best suit their tastes, we make use of pictures as options in the second and third part. For clothing, we use photos posted on popular social media sites owned by fashion gurus, fashion magazines photo shoots, and pictures in catalogs of clothing brands. As for cosmetic products, we use photos from the brands official ads. We handed out 211 copies of the questionnaire. In the 192 effective replies, 83 of them are done by male respondents, and 109 by female respondents. II.4.2. Analysis of the result The result of the questionnaire is mixed with some surprises. The figures show that senior high school students in Taiwan are influenced by K-pop even in varied degrees. First, out of 221 respondents, only 20% of them do not pay attention to any Korean artists, dramas or variety shows, and in these respondents, 95% have no interest in buying Korean fashion-related products. On the other hand, among 80% of those who come in close contact with K-pop, only 20% don t have the intention to purchase any products at all. This disproportionate gap shows that teenagers in Taipei are greatly influenced by the Korean wave, either in entertainment or in consumption behavior. Figure 1: Influence of K-pop on Purchase Intention 4
Next, we asked about the factors that affect the respondents decisions most when they shop. Interestingly, we found that celebrity endorsements are the main factor that encourages the purchase intention of high school students. Over 54% of the respondents state that they will pay attention to or purchase products because of endorsements but among them, 48% spend approximately 500 to 2000 NT dollars on Korean branded products. The decrease in number might be attributed to the fact that high school students have limited amount of pocket money and because unlike teenagers in western countries and Japan, Taiwanese teenagers are not used to wearing makeup. Besides, school uniforms greatly reduced the necessity for casual wear, so allocating the money to fashion seems unlikely. In this aspect, we believe that teenagers in Taipei are quite sensible consumers. Figure 2: Actual Expenses or Budgets for K-pop Related Products In the following parts of the questionnaire, we analyze the teenagers aesthetic standards in two aspects, asking them about how they like different styles of makeup and outfits respectively. Our result indicates that Korean styles dominate over other styles in the category of women s casual wear with an overwhelming majority of 88%. Korean-style casual clothes that constantly appear in dramas, movies, or celebrities daily wardrobe have served their purpose of becoming the standard of beauty. In fact, our questionnaire re-confirmed the survey conducted by Institute for Information Industry. Overall, women mostly watch dramas, and men focus on daily information women like to watch videos about K-dramas (34.5%), music videos (28.6%), Taiwanese dramas (22.7%) while men tend to watch more news (25.1%), lifestyles (19.9%), western movies (18.9%). ( 大紀元新聞網, 2015). We found that whether female respondents purchase Korean branded goods or not, they are consciously or unconsciously influenced by what they see on TV and other media. On the other hand, while male respondents didn t show such preference, we can still see that Korean style has the highest percentage. Figure 3: Students Preferences for Different Styles of Women s Clothing 5
Figure 4: Students Preferences for Different Styles of Men s Clothing Finally in the category of makeup, we found that the respondents like Japanese-styled eyebrow shape better, but when it comes to full-faced makeup, the respondents prefer Korean styled makeup. As for the favor cushion foundation and two tone lipsticks, the two kinds of cosmetics that were discussed intensively in 2016, Korean cosmetic products have gained the most votes. It is also clear that their choices were highly influenced by celebrity endorsements, since the options that are endorsed by artist are selected by more respondents. Figure 5: Students Preferences for Branded Cosmetic Products From Different Countries III. Conclusion From our research and survey, we come to conclude that Korean entertainment culture is able to disseminate rapidly and has a huge influence in people s lives relying on their successful marketing strategies. Either through the active usage of social media, celebrity endorsements, increasing the market share, or increasing public interest, Korean brands imperceptibly influence people s aesthetic standards. What s more, we can clearly see in our questionnaire that not only those who get in touch with K-pop but also those who don t are affected by it consciously or unconsciously. Korean enterprises make use of dramas and idols to enhance exposure, promote sales and set the fashion trends, effectively impregnating the audience with their desired aesthetic standards. By balancing and integrating multi bits, Korean fashion and entertainment industry have conquered the world with the carefully-packaged pop culture and even lifestyle, which led to their rapid expansion worldwide. K-pop isn t built up by the artists on the stage but by the marketing and packaging team behind the stage. It is a successful business marketing example for all of us to follow and emulate. As for the aesthetic influence Korean waves bring to high school students, we believe that although it is not possible to avoid the impact that commonality as well as social and mass media has on us, it is equally important for us to focus on individuality. 6
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