Cultural Sustainability: Teaching and Design Strategies for Incorporating Service Design in Religious Heritage Branding

Abstract

Under globalization, a local brand must be managed by strengthening local uniqueness and representativeness to become a unique brand that is irreplaceable in the international market. An examination of Taiwan’s cultural characteristics and resources shows that religion has been the focus of the government’s tourism promotion in recent years. A religious site is filled with architectural, historical, aesthetic, and cultural elements. Through online marketing and multilingual introductions, the government has packaged Taiwan’s religious culture into a brand. Temples not only provide devotees with a place for spiritual sustenance but also offer them cultural tourism experiences. When service design is integrated into the branding process, the various touchpoints experienced are the key to promoting temple and tourist interactions. A culture can be converted into unique and representative patterns by using brand design strategies, thereby creating opportunities for cultural sustainability. This study chose a national monument temple in Yunlin County, Taiwan, as the study location. Through a course of instruction, students with professional design backgrounds were granted the opportunity to work in a monumental temple, where they practiced participatory learning, played the role of mentors, and developed design proposals. By using observation and interview methods as well as service design tools, the students identified problems and needs and proposed service design insights and design implementation plans. The results of this study were analyzed along with the design flow, course outcomes, and students’ open-ended questionnaires. Finally, a religious branding design strategy based on the core value of cultural sustainability was proposed.

Positive and Negative Aspects of Religious Tourism in Local Management

“…However, before focusing on the phenomenon of pilgrimages, it is necessary to understand what its determinants are. Methodological Procedures To achieve the objectives of this study, an exploratory study was conducted considering this bias to allow for proper analysis of what has not been studied (Collins and Porras 1994); (Gil 2008) mentioned that exploratory research can help clarify the values, ideas, and patterns of the conceptual framework surrounding the research topic.…”

The influence of virtual reality on the experience of religious cultural heritage content

“…Religious works (architecture, paintings, icons, etc.) are usually produced very skillfully with a high level of technology, which is enough to give an esthetic experience (Chang, 2021). In this way, the esthetic elements of religious cultural heritage will eventually be the elements that help people feel spiritual experience and authenticity.…”

“…Finally, religious cultural heritage can stimulate escape experiences, such as a feeling of being temporarily removed from the world during worship (Chang, 2021). Through this, the experiencer achieves the aspiration to escape from everyday secular life for a short time (Vistad et al, 2020), which is also the main function of spiritual experience.…”

“…In digital presentations of these sites, religious works (architecture, paintings, icons, etc.) are usually reproduced very skillfully with a high level of technology to provide a satisfying esthetic experience (Chang and Chuang, 2021). Thus, the esthetic elements of religious cultural heritage content assist with the spiritual experience and authenticity.…”

The perception of UNESCO World Heritage Sites' managers about concepts and elements of cultural sustainability in tourism

“…From the globalization context in which there are incentives to travel consumption, cultural heritage can be commodified by tourism, turning them into stories and emotional elements with economic appeal (Chang and Chuang, 2021). The heritage becomes a product that can be sold in a simplified way, without real characteristics of the community in which it is located, creating problems for cultural sustainability (Martins, 2021; Terkenli and Georgoula, 2021).…”