Consumer-Citizens of China (Open Access): The Role of Foreign Brands in the Imagined Future China

ISBN-13: 9780415553490 / Angielski / Twarda / 2010 / 176 str.

Kelly Tian;Lily Dong

Opis

A PDF version of this book is available for free in open access via www.tandfebooks.com as well as the OAPEN Library platform, www.oapen.org. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license and is part of the OAPEN-UK research project. This book presents a comprehensive examination of Chinese consumer behaviour and challenges the previously dichotomous interpretation of the consumption of Western and non-Western brands in China. The dominant position is that Chinese consumers are driven by a desire to imitate the lifestyles of Westerners and thereby advance their social standing locally. The alternative is that consumers reject Western brands as a symbolic gesture of loyalty to their nation-state. Drawing from survey responses and in depth interviews with Chinese consumers in both rural and urban areas, Kelly Tian and Lily Dong find that consumers situate Western brands within select historical moments. This embellishment attaches historical meanings to Western brands in ways that render them useful in asserting preferred visions of the future China. By highlighting how Western brands are used in contests for national identity, Consumer-Citizens of China challenges the notion of the "patriot's paradox" and answers scholars' questions as to whether Chinese nationalists today allow for a Sino-Western space where the Chinese can love China without hating the West. Consumer-Citizens of China will be of interest to students and scholars of business studies, Chinese and Asian Studies and Political Science. Kelly Tian is Professor of Marketing and holds the Anderson Chair of Business at New Mexico State University. Lily Dong is Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks.

Going beyond generalizations about "the Chinese consumer" this book shows that marketers’ decisions to brand a product as foreign evokes intense emotions, both positive and negative, which derive from reflexive linkages of "foreign brands" to national narratives of East-West relations.

Topics covered include:

-the historical shaping of present-day consumer decisions

-issues of political correctness in foreign brand consumption

-the often neglected dark-side and feared aspects that foreign Western brands hold for many Chinese consumers.

-Chinese consumers’ fantasies of foreign brands and how those work to ritualize their marketplace behavior

-institutionally constructed national narratives and the ways in which Chinese citizens engage these to guide their foreign brand choices

This book is suitable for upper-level undergraduates, postgraduates, academics and professionals studying consumer behaviour in China, Chinese marketing and Chinese business.

O autorze

Kelly Tian is Professor of Marketing in the Department of Management and Marketing, College of Business, University of Wyoming, USA.

Lily Dong is Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Alaska Fairbanks