The Effects Of Face Consciousness On Brand-oriented Purchasing: Consumer Gender As A Moderator

In the30years of Chinese Reform and Opening up, the foreignenterpriseshavesetuptheirofficesorbranchesin China because the mainland China marketdoor are opening to the world.Even some of the world’s top500enterprisesare consideringtransferring the company’s headquarters to this piece of most development potential ofemerging markets. Huge amounts of the population and the strong consumption abilityattract all kinds of world-class brands to enter the Chinese market. However, it’s uncertainwhether Chinese consumers will be willing to pull out their money to buy these kinds ofbrand name products. Therefore, it’s well worth doing the research to develop the theoryof brand-oriented purchasing in China.Because of the traditional Confucian culture, there is a large difference between theChinese values and Western values. If we just use the western theories on the Chineseconsumer behavior research, we can’t fully explain the uniqueness of Chinese consumerbehavior. So we need to introduce localization constructs and analyses the Chineseconsumer behavior from the view of localization constructs. In china, in the effect of gradeawareness and comparison, the primary purpose of buying brand name products is theirown symbolic value. Since Chinese consumers’ think highly of symbolic value of brandname products, face consciousness may effect brand-oriented purchasing as an important factor.This research analyses the Chinese consumer brand-oriented purchasing from theview of face consciousness which is divided into “desire to gain face” and “fear of losingface”. We examined whether these effects vary according to consumer gender. Statisticalresults using a sample consisting of338Chinese consumers indicated that “desire to gainface”and“fear of losing face”aretwo significant antecedents of brand-oriented purchasingand the effects of face consciousness are stronger for male than for female consumers.