Packaging constitutes a cultural factor intricately woven into commodity packaging. It transcends being a mere amalgamation of culture and packaging; rather, it represents a fusion of material and spiritual wealth manifested in the activities surrounding commodity packaging. In essence, packaging culture encapsulates humanistic ideals expressed through these packaging activities, with its core being the interplay and organic integration of economic endeavors and humanistic concepts. As illustrated in Figure 1, packaging culture manifests itself in three distinct forms.
Figure 1. Forms of Packaging Culture
Implementation layer: This layer embodies the culmination of packaging design activities, representing a tangible and comprehensible product form. It serves as the bedrock of the entire packaging culture. Oriented primarily towards marketing objectives, packaging culture integrates the creative endeavors encompassing social, economic, artistic, and psychological factors. It mirrors people's unified perception and creativity in packaging design, encapsulating a harmonious blend of creation and aesthetics. Furthermore, it serves as a reflection of the developmental stage of productive forces within a specific societal context.
Institutional level: Packaging, as a social activity, undergoes a protracted process of design and production, giving rise to policies, regulations, standards, and rules that ensure and promote its efficacy. Organizational management establishes social norms, which, while not directly tied to cultural resources, ultimately derive their nature and developmental level from the dynamics of resource exchange within culture.
Within the aforementioned three levels of cultural structure, the implementation level and the system level manifest in external material forms that are readily perceptible. In contrast, the spiritual and cultural level is embedded in the psychological depths of individuals and groups, posing challenges for direct observation. Consequently, in the exploration of packaging culture, a dynamic examination of the multidimensional structure of cultural forms and their interactions is imperative. This approach corrects cognitive perspectives, enabling a deeper understanding of the consumption mentality prevalent in the packaging design market and guiding the practical aspects of packaging design.
Spiritual and cultural layer: The spiritual dimension comprises values, thought patterns, moral sentiments, and other aspects cultivated by individuals through prolonged social practice and awareness activities. In the realm of packaging culture, concrete manifestations of people's requirements, wishes, emotions, cognition, and judgments during the purchase and utilization processes are discernible.
The focus of the study on commodity quantification is the aesthetic space of commodities, which comprises numerous commodities. As illustrated in Figure 2, the commodities within the aesthetic space of commodities can be categorized into two groups: those that have been circulated in the market and those that have yet to materialize. The latter can be further subdivided into two categories: one is possessed by the producer, and the other exists within the potential market.