IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/joreco/v21y2014i2p203-210.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Regional differences in consumer preference structures within China

Author

Listed:
  • Frank, Björn
  • Abulaiti, Gulimire
  • Enkawa, Takao

Abstract

This study examines whether a single marketing strategy is sufficient to cover the Chinese market. Using data from four regions and nine industries, it finds that major regional differences in consumer preferences make regional market segmentation an attractive option. In more developed regions, consumers rely more on perceived quality and public brand image but less on quality expectations. Uyghurs care more about perceived quality and personal recognition but less about quality expectations than Han Chinese. Personal recognition is more important to southern than northern Chinese. Overall, consumer preference structures are influenced more strongly by differences in economic development than subculture.

Suggested Citation

  • Frank, Björn & Abulaiti, Gulimire & Enkawa, Takao, 2014. "Regional differences in consumer preference structures within China," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 203-210.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:joreco:v:21:y:2014:i:2:p:203-210
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jretconser.2013.12.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096969891300129X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jretconser.2013.12.001?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Frank, Björn & Abulaiti, Gulimire & Herbas Torrico, Boris & Enkawa, Takao, 2013. "How do Asia's two most important consumer markets differ? Japanese–Chinese differences in customer satisfaction and its formation," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 66(12), pages 2397-2405.
    2. Ittner, CD & Larcker, DF, 1998. "Are nonfinancial measures leading indicators of financial performance? An analysis of customer satisfaction," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36, pages 1-35.
    3. Veeck, Ann & Burns, Alvin C., 2005. "Changing tastes: the adoption of new food choices in post-reform China," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 58(5), pages 644-652, May.
    4. Armstrong, J. Scott & Overton, Terry S., 1977. "Estimating Nonresponse Bias in Mail Surveys," MPRA Paper 81694, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    6. Johnson, Michael D. & Herrmann, Andreas & Gustafsson, Anders, 2002. "Comparing customer satisfaction across industries and countries," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 23(6), pages 749-769, December.
    7. Soares, Ana Maria & Farhangmehr, Minoo & Shoham, Aviv, 2007. "Hofstede's dimensions of culture in international marketing studies," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 60(3), pages 277-284, March.
    8. Strizhakova, Yuliya & Coulter, Robin A. & Price, Linda L., 2008. "The meanings of branded products: A cross-national scale development and meaning assessment," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 82-93.
    9. Zhou, Joyce Xin & Arnold, Mark J. & Pereira, Arun & Yu, Jun, 2010. "Chinese consumer decision-making styles: A comparison between the coastal and inland regions," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 45-51, January.
    10. Yeboah, Osei-Agyeman & Ofori-Boadu, Victor & Li, Tongzhe, 2010. "China-U.S. Potential Non-food Ethanol Exportation," 2010 Annual Meeting, February 6-9, 2010, Orlando, Florida 56469, Southern Agricultural Economics Association.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Francioni, Barbara & Savelli, Elisabetta & Cioppi, Marco, 2018. "Store satisfaction and store loyalty: The moderating role of store atmosphere," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 333-341.
    2. Muhammad Naeem Anjum & Bi Xiuchun & Jaffar Abbas & Zhang Shuguang, 2017. "Analyzing predictors of customer satisfaction and assessment of retail banking problems in Pakistan," Cogent Business & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 4(1), pages 1338842-133, January.
    3. Lee, Jaeha & Nguyen, Minhthu Jill, 2017. "Product attributes and preference for foreign brands among Vietnamese consumers," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 76-83.
    4. Georgiana-Raluca Lădaru & Marian Siminică & Maria Claudia Diaconeasa & Diana Maria Ilie & Carmen-Elena Dobrotă & Marian Motofeanu, 2021. "Influencing Factors and Social Media Reflections of Bakery Products Consumption in Romania," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(6), pages 1-17, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Frank, Björn & Enkawa, Takao & Schvaneveldt, Shane J., 2015. "The role of individualism vs. collectivism in the formation of repurchase intent: A cross-industry comparison of the effects of cultural and personal values," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 261-278.
    2. Ya-Hui Hsu & Wenchang Fang & Yuanchung Lee, 2009. "Ethically Questionable Behavior in Sales Representatives – An Example from the Taiwanese Pharmaceutical Industry," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 88(1), pages 155-166, April.
    3. Sebastian Schneider, 2022. "Price-related consumer discussions in China and the United States: a cross-cultural study investigating price perceptions and word-of-mouth transmission," Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 21(3), pages 274-290, June.
    4. Namwoon Kim & Jin K. Han & Rajendra K. Srivastava, 2002. "A Dynamic IT Adoption Model for the SOHO Market: PC Generational Decisions with Technological Expectations," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 48(2), pages 222-240, February.
    5. Hauck, Jana & Suess-Reyes, Julia & Beck, Susanne & Prügl, Reinhard & Frank, Hermann, 2016. "Measuring socioemotional wealth in family-owned and -managed firms: A validation and short form of the FIBER Scale," Journal of Family Business Strategy, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 133-148.
    6. Wood, Matthew S. & McKelvie, Alexander & Haynie, J. Michael, 2014. "Making it personal: Opportunity individuation and the shaping of opportunity beliefs," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 252-272.
    7. Worm, Stefan & Srivastava, Rajendra K., 2014. "Impact of component supplier branding on profitability," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 409-424.
    8. Lepthien, Anke & Papies, Dominik & Clement, Michel & Melnyk, Valentyna, 2017. "The ugly side of customer management – Consumer reactions to firm-initiated contract terminations," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 829-850.
    9. Sojin Jung & Hyeon Jeong Cho & Byoungho Ellie Jin, 2020. "Does effective cost transparency increase price fairness? An analysis of apparel brand strategies," Journal of Brand Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 27(5), pages 495-507, September.
    10. Jennifer Oetzel & Chang Hoon Oh, 2021. "A storm is brewing: Antecedents of disaster preparation in risk prone locations," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(8), pages 1545-1570, August.
    11. Aspara, Jaakko & Chakravarti, Amitav, 2015. "Investors’ reactions to company advertisements: the persuasive effect of product-featuring ads," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 64130, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    12. Marshall, Roger & Huan, Tzung-Cheng (T.C.) & Xu, Yingzi & Nam, Inwoo, 2011. "Extending prospect theory cross-culturally by examining switching behavior in consumer and business-to-business contexts," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 64(8), pages 871-878, August.
    13. Frank, Björn & Abulaiti, Gulimire & Herbas Torrico, Boris & Enkawa, Takao, 2013. "How do Asia's two most important consumer markets differ? Japanese–Chinese differences in customer satisfaction and its formation," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 66(12), pages 2397-2405.
    14. Hsieh, Pi-Jung, 2021. "Understanding medical consumers’ intentions to switch from cash payment to medical mobile payment: A perspective of technology migration," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 173(C).
    15. Jasna Auer Antoncic & Bostjan Antoncic & Matjaz Gantar & Robert D. Hisrich & Lawrence J. Marks & Alexandre A. Bachkirov & Zhaoyang Li & Pierre Polzin & Jose L. Borges & Antonio Coelho & Marja-Liisa Ka, 2018. "Risk-Taking Propensity and Entrepreneurship: The Role of Power Distance," Journal of Enterprising Culture (JEC), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 26(01), pages 1-26, March.
    16. Schmidt, Dennis R., 2001. "The prospects of taxpayer agreement with aggressive tax advice," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 157-172, April.
    17. Flatten, Tessa & Adams, Daniel & Brettel, Malte, 2015. "Fostering absorptive capacity through leadership: A cross-cultural analysis," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 519-534.
    18. Wenting Chen & Chunjia Han & Lei Wang & Petros Ieromonachou & Xiaochen Lu, 2021. "Recognition of entrepreneur’s social ties and firm innovation in emerging markets: explanation from the industrial institutional environment and survival pressure," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 38(2), pages 491-518, June.
    19. Iryna Alves & Sofia M. Lourenço, 2022. "The use of non-financial performance measures for managerial compensation: evidence from SMEs," Journal of Management Control: Zeitschrift für Planung und Unternehmenssteuerung, Springer, vol. 33(2), pages 151-187, June.
    20. Baudier, Patricia & Ammi, Chantal & Hikkerova, Lubica, 2022. "Impact of advertising on users’ perceptions regarding the Internet of things," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 355-366.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:joreco:v:21:y:2014:i:2:p:203-210. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-retailing-and-consumer-services .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.