Re-interpreting marketings role in the study of the Asian consumer

What researchers may often forget is that the largest ethnic group in the world is Han Chinese (Chiang et al., 2018; Parker et al., 2001); in fact, about 60% of the world's population lives in an Asian country. When marketing studies seek to make claims about "universal" consumption behavior, ironically, they often use a sample that is misrepresentative of the global populace. Consumers in the United States are not the gold standard to measure consumption behavior that ostensibly generalizes to the world at large; instead, to begin to make claims about fundamental and universal human behavior, researchers must, at the very least, consider Asians. Therefore, we make a provocative claim: Whether or not researchers are interested in studying Asian consumers, both for methodological soundness and theoretical generalizability, it is imperative.