From The Starting Point Of The End Of The Marketing In The Marketing

After over30years of reform and opening up, China has her own theories and methods system of consumer research.In the introduction part, the literature growth law theory of D. S. Price is used to analyze the development stages of Chinese consumer research. After a systematic research, the conclusion is that the first stage is1979-1992, the second is1993-2001, and the third is2002-2009. And then, the method of keywords clustering is used to analyze the theory structure of Chinese consumer study. It concludes that the theory structure consists of six main parts:consumer psychology; consumer behavior; marketing methods of consumer; the study of online consumers; consumer economics; the rights and protections of consumers.In the1st chapter, the brief history of China market economic system is given as the background of the marketing and consumer research. Then the evolution of Chinese consumer research theories is analyzed based on the ideas changing of marketing at the different stages (production-oriented, product-oriented, sales-oriented, and market-oriented). Main consumer research theories include stimulus-response theory,"bullet theory", brand image and corporate image theories, unique selling proposition, positioning, brand equity, integrated marketing communication, and etc.In the2nd chapter, market segmentation is discussed from different points of view, that is, research consumers according to their gender, age, lifestyles, and social class and so on.In the3rd chapter, consumer psychology and behavior studies are given a deep review. They are the core of consumer research. In the consumer psychology part, the author focus on the studies of consumers’wants, motivations, values, and attitudes; in the consumer behavior part, sources of influence, behavior patterns, process of decision making, and post-decision processes are discussed deeply. The new developments of online consumers’psychology and behavior are also researched in this chapter.In the4th chapter, most of the methods which have been used to study the consumers are introduced. Some of them are traditional qualitative and quantitative consumer research methods, such as focus group, depth interview, projective technique, survey methods, observation, experimentation, ethnography, and etc. And most of these traditional methods get new life in the cyberspace. Certainly, the emergence of new methods always makes the scholars excited. The author give a brief introduction of how the methods of eye and click tracking, log mining, social network analysis, and location based service are used to analyze the behavior of online consumers.In the conclusion part, several laws and trends of Chinese consumer research are discussed.