A Study On The Global Convergence Of Chinese Consumers' Preferences

In decades of debate over global standardization versus local adaptation, glocalization strategy wins wide acceptance with high flexibility and comprehensiveness. However, there exists a gap in answering how to achieve "glocalization", especially when operating in vast emerging countries such as China, Russia, India and Brazil (BRICs) with different characteristics from traditional developed markets, such as big territory, uneven development among regions, high cultural distance, etc.On one hand, there are high demond among consumers for global products and brands as a tool for them to gain global identity, which represent mainstream culture of developed economies. On the other hand, traditional culture and long lasting living habits tend to restrain this kind of global convergence trend, and encourage consumers in these market keep their national traditions and uniqueness. The two facets above is what is called consumption convergence or divergence, respectively. These contradict trends make the trade-off decision more complex and tough between global standardization and local adaptation for product strategy of multinational companies.This study proposed to solve this question by examining consumption convergence degree in the context of China, which represents common charecteristics with other emerging market. It proposed that as demand characteristic varying from physiological to sociological, consumption convergence, represented by consumers’ attitude towards global versus local products and brands, will domesticates different degree. Regional modernization, consumers’ personal traits and companies’ marketing position are main antecedents of consumption convergence.In order to reveal the consummers preference convergence trend in China and its antecedents, based on literature review and theoretical model development, this study conducted two steps of research focus on two starting point respectively. First part is empirical sturdy on Chinese consumers’preference convergence, with survey data from829valid samples covering29provinces including4special municipalities in3regions, varing from eastern coastal developed areas to western inland less developed regions. Second part is case studies about global standardized and local adapted product strategies of leading multinational companies operating in China, in three typical industries, fast food, clothing and consumer electronics.In the first part study, with consumers’ preference including attitude and purchase behavior as dependent variables, this study investigated the conceptional model with Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) method, using data from829valid respondents in29provincs covering three big regions in China. The following hypotheses are supported by imprical results:first, regional modernization is positively related with consumers’ preference global convergency in China; global identity mediates the relationship between regional modernization and consumsers’ preference convergency partly; industrial differences exist in overall preference convergence towards global products and brands, where the more phychological and social meanings the products and trands contain, the higher preference convergence the consumers show. Finally, consumers’self-construal especially dependent self-constural, and social desirability also play roles on Chinese consumers preference convergence, i.e., positive attitude towards global products and brands, while attitude towards products plays cremental roles for the product adaptation strategy of multinational companies.In the second part, the study choose key multinational players in three inductries, including:KFC and McDonald’s in fast food; Zara, H&M, C&A and CC&DD in clothing; Panasonic, Sony and Apple in consumer electronics. The camparation and analysis of these companies show that there is an overall increasing trend of product local adaptation in different industries. However, clothing manufactures domenstrate the highest global standardization in product strategy, while consumer electronics focus on local R&D even reverse innovation and. Most foriengn fast food companies offer standard western style food, but highly localized food provided by KFC show high performance in the market. In general, offering adapted products to local consumers is a key trend in such period that Chinese consumers are show higher requirement to foreign products with economic development than decades ago. However, if the company and brand conduct high-end market position strategy globally, higher standardization strategy is more proper for them to keep globally high-end image and lead the consumption trend across the global market.Main findings and conclusions of this study include:1. In general, Chinese consumers demonstrate higher preference convergence degree on attitude to local adapted products than global standardized products. Product preference demonstrates obvious regional differences, while brand preference embodies high personality differences. 2. Chinese consumers have strong supportive attitude toward local brands. However, they like international brands better. There exists great gap between people’s high preference and low purchase behavior on global brands.3. Regional modernization has positive influence on consumers’preference convergence. Along with the modernization process, consumption convergence will increase. However, there exist regional and industrial differences in terms of convergence degree.4. In industrial level, in such industries with close connections of consumers’ physiological needs as packaged food, restaurant or furniture, consumers show lower convergence degree than other industries mainly for consumers’sociological needs, including cloth, mobile phone, etc.5. Attitude towards global or local brands, and attitude towards global or local products are not two poles of one construct but two independent constructs. That means, consumers can show both high preference on global and local brands or product at the same time.6. In Chinese market, international brands almost equal to famous brands, which help international brands gain some kind of born advantage on consumers’perception of brand status, quality an reputation.7. There exists dimensional difference in two concepts:global identity and independent self-construal. Global citizenship is separated from global identity. Independent self-construal is divided into two sub-dimensions:individuality and independence.Main theoretical contributions and implications include:1. The findings about dimensional differences of global identity and self-construal are very useful for equivalence problem when doing research in Chinese context or other oriental or collectivist culture.2. The empirical result of this study clarified the debate on consumption convergence or divergence. The findings support Crossconvergence perspective. The study also explored the antecedents of consumption convergence.3. This study explored main influencers of consumers’preference toward global and local products and brands. This paper investigates consumption convergence with attitude toward global products as measurement and using empirical research method, which differ from previous research mainly using macro-level economic data or qualitative research. 4. This study enriches the consumer culture literature especially the global consumer culture (GCC) research. The relationship between global identity and consumption preference convergence is meaningful for further research in thie field.5. This study proposed the Demand-Strategy Fit Model to help the resolve the paradox between globalization and localization in widely accepted glocalization strategy. The theoretical model and empirical results are important theoretical contributions to extend the theoretical system of the existing multinational global marketing strategy.6. This study enriches the marketing strategy research of emerging markets. The context of this study is the world’s largest emerging market country, China, which represents a certain extent also in other emerging market countries with regional differences in the process of modernization.7. The current study extends the covering and types of industries in existing international research. According to the function meeting consumers’ needs varying from physiological to sociological ones, industries can be classified into different types. This kind of industry and product classification is expected to have great reference for future studies involving similar industrial elements or comparison.Also, practical implications are provided in the last part of this stydy, including: product strategy choice for multinational companies; communication and advertising strategies and tactics for both multinational and local companies; and competitive strategy for local companies, etc.