Consumer Culture Positioning: Research On The Effectiveness Of Application Of Global Elements And Chinese Elements

In recent years,practitioners extensively use elements that symbolize global culture or Chinese culture in product or brand design to attract consumers.However,due to lack clear and solid theoretical guidance,more and more enterprises often encounter Waterloo and even arouse resistance and resentment from consumers in the process of using cultural elements to create product or brand image.For example,some products or brands with Chinese elements encounter shui tu bu fu,and others with global elements encounter bu lun bu lei.In the research field of global branding,global consumer culture positioning and local consumer culture positioning have become academic consensus.At the product and brand level,it‘s reflected in the choice of the appropriate cultural elements to strengthen the two positioning strategies.Up to now,existing researches have provided little insights about the effectiveness of global elements and Chinese elements on this issue,and even existed opposite views,which lacked solid theoretical bases and systematic empirical analyses.From an academic point of view,a basic academic issue is when to choose Chinese elements to build local consumer culture positioning and when to choose global elements to build global consumer culture positioning.Specifically,the questions that the academic circles need to further explore include: Under what conditions the use of Chinese elements is more effective? Under what conditions the use of global elements is more effective? And what is the mechanism? Is the effectiveness of cultural elements related to the characteristics of products or brands? Further,if the connection exists,would the influence of localized strategy of global brands with Chinese elements to attract local consumers with local identity be moderated by brand characteristics? Exploring the above questions is critical to the globalization of Chinese brands and deepen the understanding of cross-cultural brand positioning.To expand knowledge regarding such questions,drawing on dynamic constructivist theory of culture,accessibility-diagnosticity framework and global branding literature,the author analyzes the effectiveness of cultural elements in consumer culture positioning from a new perspective of cultural symbolism and introduces processing fluency as mediating variable.On the basis of previous researches,the author proposes hypotheses to analyze the above questions.It is worth noting that each hypothesis in this study is based on the former hypothesis.The hypothetical relationships include: the relationship between cultural symbolism and association strength of cultural elements;boundary condition of the effectiveness of cultural elements(basic effect);mechanism of the effectiveness of cultural elements(direct argument about intermediary mechanism);under which condition local identity can affect consumer behavior intention towards global brands with Chinese elements(further confirms the intermediary mechanism and expands related researches regarding local identity in the research field of global branding).In order to test the theoretical hypotheses,the author designs four formal studies(including six pretest studies).Specifically,(1)study 1 takes products and brands as study objects and reveals that when products or brands symbolize Chinese culture,individuals are more likely to think of Chinese elements than global elements.By contrast,when products or brands symbolize global culture,individuals are more likely to think of global elements than Chinese elements;(2)study 2 takes products as study objects and reveals that the interaction between cultural symbolism and cultural elements significantly affects individuals‘ product evaluation.For products that symbolize Chinese culture,integration with Chinese elements are more effective than global elements.By contrast,for products that symbolize global culture,integration with global elements are more effective than Chinese elements;(3)study 3 takes products as study objects and reveals that the interaction between cultural symbolism and cultural elements significantly affects individuals‘ product evaluation through processing fluency.When products symbolize global culture,compared to those integration with Chinese elements,integration with global elements are more likely to improve processing fluency,which in turn enhance product evaluation.By contrast,when products symbolize Chinese culture,compared to those integration with global elements,integration with Chinese elements are more likely to improve processing fluency,which in turn enhance product evaluation;(4)study 4 takes a localized global brand as study object and reveals that only in the case of low perceived globalness(high processing fluency),local identity can positively influence behavioral intention towards the localized global brand through brand local icon value.By contrast,in the case of high perceived globalness(low processing fluency),local identity cann‘t positively influence behavioral intention towards the localized global brand through brand local icon value.It is worth pointing out that,in order to improve the reliability and external validity,each of the above studies is different in the form of cultural symbolism manipulation(by different products and brands)and cultural elements manipulation(by aesthetic style,story theme,and language).However,the conclusions have strong consistency and stability,which demonstrates the internal logic of the effectiveness of cultural elements,and expands and deepens local identity in the field of global branding.In general,the theoretical contributions of this study are mainly reflected in the following aspects:First,this study integrates the effectiveness of Chinese elements and global elements in positioning strategy in empirical study.It should be clearly pointed out that although existing researches have carried out qualitative analysis or quantitative analysis regarding the effectiveness of Chinese elements or global elements,there has no an empirical study integrates both up to now.For this purpose,this study combines related researches of Chinese elements and global elements in existing researches,and explores their effectiveness in positioning strategy simultaneously,which further expands and deepens related researches regarding cultural elements‘ effectiveness and global branding.Second,drawing on dynamic constructivist theory of culture,accessibility-diagnosticity framework,processing fluency,and cultural symbolism,this study,for the first time,provides a solid theoretical foundation for the effectiveness of cultural elements in positioning strategy and clarifies the influencing mechanism and boundary condition,and to a certain extent,makes clear some conflicting views about the effectiveness of cultural elements in existing researches.In addition,some studies have pointed out that the effectiveness of cultural elements varies with product categories.This study deepens and expands this view and puts forward a new point of view: the moderating effect of category on the effectiveness of cultural elements is reflected in cultural symbolism of product rather than product category itself.Third,this study clarifies the internal logic of how local identity influences consumers' behavioral intention towards global brands with Chinese elements through a moderated mediation model(in study 4).It is worth noting that this model not only verifies the mechanism of the effectiveness of cultural elements in positioning strategy,but also deepens and expands the research orientation in global branding field,which calls for more researches in psychological constructs.Although the academic circles have developed a series of psychological constructs to understand the effectiveness of global brand positioning in the field of global branding,few empirical studies have explored the mechanism and boundary conditions through with these constructs exert influence,which lead to inconsistent conclusions in predicting consumers‘ behavior and attitude with such psychological constructs.For this purpose,this study reveals that whether local identity can influence consumers‘ behavior intention through brand local icon value depends on the boundary condition of perceived globalness.Therefore,this study complements some basic points that have been ignored by previous studies.Fourth,on the basis of Alden et al.(1999)‘s framework for consumer culture positioning,this study,for the first time,manipulates global elements and Chinese elements through three ways of aesthetic style,language,and story theme,which further enriches the connotation of cultural elements and the ways to manipulate.In addition,this study sorts out a lot of related researches regarding global branding,global elements,and Chinese elements,and condenses some research themes,which to some extent,provides research foundation and research direction for future research.In the practical sense,this study also provides several new insights:(1)marketers should consider the use of cultural elements to build consumer culture positioning from the perspective of cultural symbolism,otherwise it will lead to bu lun bu lei and shui tu bu fu.For products or brands that symbolize Chinese culture,marketers need to consider the integration with Chinese elements to build local consumer culture positioning.For products or brands that symbolize global culture,marketers need to consider the integration with global elements to build global consumer culture positioning;(2)In the process of globalization,Chinese companies should not rush to get rid of the effect of country of origin and weaken the connection with China,and integrate global elements to build global consumer culture positioning to create global cultural capital.On the contrary,marketers should take cultural symbolism as a basis and consider how to conform to its cultural characteristics with suitable cultural elements.Otherwise,it will lead to low processing fluency;(3)In Chinese market,not all transnational brands are suitable to adopt localized strategy and integrate Chinese elements to attract Chinese consumers with local identity.For brands with high global cultural capital,the integration with Chinese elements is not a wise choice.On the contrary,for brands with low global cultural capital,the integration with Chinese elements can attract Chinese consumers with local identity.