Research On The Image Of China's HSR In Overseas Market

The purpose of this research is to explore the actual image of China 's HSR in overseas market as a way of contributing to its global marketing.With rapid development in recent years,China's HSR has established mature and advanced technology at home and has begun to go global.However,in spite of certain achievement in overseas market,its globalisation does not go well with many cases of failure having occurred.HSR's globalisation is actually international marketing in which process the product image perceived by target market plays a crucial role,as is evidenced by the "perception-attitude-behaviour" framework and "positioning" strategy.Therefore,in order to establish a good image in overseas market and facilitate its globalisation,it is necessary to firstly find out what the actual image is before accordingly suggesting improvement strategies.This research mainly employs grounded theory as the qualitative research method.Grounded theory is designed to construct new theories from raw data,opposite to quantitative empirical research in terms of research procedure.Coding is at the core of grounded theory and there are three rounds of coding with increasing levels of abstraction-open coding,axial coding and selective coding.Through coding,concepts and categories are abstracted from source data based on which the theoretical framework is built and tested.The source data of this research are collected from eight worldly pronounced media-Reuters,BBC,The Financial Times,The Economist,Time,The Washington Post,The New York Times,The Guardian-because those media could reflect or influence the world's perceptions of China's HSR.120 most relevant reports to the key word "China's HSR" are selected,20 of which are randomly chosen to test theoretical saturation while the rest 100 are used to build the theoretical framework.Strictly following the research procedures of grounded theory,the researcher with the help of NVivo as the text analysis tool analysed and conceptualised the source data through open coding,axial coding and selective coding.Finally,42 concepts,15 categories and six main categories are generated.The six main categories are product,brand,company,country of origin,overseas market,case and incident.The 15 categories include product quality,product price,service,brand reputation,brand value,brand comparison,company ability,company image,business ethics,hard power,soft power,overseas opportunity,overseas risk,critical incident,secondary case.The 42 concepts include comfortability,popularity,practicability,safety,technology content,price comparison,price level,service attitude,service quality,positive reputation,negative reputation,economic value,political value,technological value,competitive advantage,competitive disadvantage,company scale,construction ability,marketing ability,profitability,learning ability,international competence,business image,political image,labour-capital relationship,safety,unfair competition,economic strength,technological strength,national system,international relations,national culture,environment,business opportunity,political opportunity,business risk,economic risk,political risk,Liu Zhijun incident,Wenzhou crash,Mexican revocation,case of success,case of failure.Based on above research methods and procedures,this research finally finds out the actual image of China 's HSR in overseas market and proposes improvement strategies to overcome its negative images.Through testing,the theoretical framework proves theoretically supported,operationally valid,and theoretically saturated.In terms of the image of China's HSR in overseas market,it is perceived from six perspectives-product,brand,company,country of origin,overseas market,cases and incidents.Generally,it presents a highly positive brand image(decent reputation,decent brand value,huge competitive edge),a fairly positive product image(high quality,excellent service,but high price),a controversial country-of-origin image(decent national hard power,but mediocre national soft power),a mediocre overseas market image(overseas risks slightly outnumber overseas opportunities),a fairly negative company image(excellent company ability,but mediocre company image and notorious business ethics),and a highly negative cases and incidents image(cases of failure outnumber cases of success,and critical incidents are mostly negative news).Theoretically,the six aspects of image can be further summarised into two core categories-"the object of perception" and "the context of perception".The former includes the static image of the product,the brand,the company,and the country of origin,while the latter includes the dynamic performance in overseas market and specific cases and incidents.This framework is theoretically saturated and in accordance with Robbins and Judge(2012)'s perception theory.In terms of the improvement strategies,they aim at overcoming the negative images for the purpose of promoting its global marketing.Based on coding,the major negative images dragging the globalisation of China's HSR include severe safety concerns,poor business ethics,negative country-of-origin image,strong political background,and high overseas risks.Accordingly,the research suggests five improvement strategies which can be implemented at both corporate level and national level.At the corporate level,on one hand,we should prioritise safety by improving safety standards and safety awareness,establishing a sound risk prevention system,and imposing harsher punishment on human-caused safety issues;on the other,we should emphasise business ethics and crack down upon corruption and unfair competition in HSR sector.At the national level,firstly,we should overcome the negative country of origin image by improving business ethics and dispelling misunderstanding from other countries;secondly,we should properly utilise national policy to support the development of our HSR at early stages but not to overprotect them or over-impose political intervention;thirdly,we should strengthen overseas risk prevention and management through risk awareness,risk estimation,feasibility study,backup plans,and good partnership.The innovation of this research lies in three aspects.Firstly,it analyses authentic international media reports to explore the actual image of China's HSR in overseas markets for the first time.There has not been any in-depth study on the image of China's HSR in either the academic circles or marketing practice,so our knowledge of it mainly comes from domestic official media or reports,which does not necessarily authentically reflect the actual image of it in overseas market.This research directly takes international media reports as its source data and explores the actual image of China 's HSR based on them,objectively presenting readers the strengths and weaknesses of China's HSR in overseas market.Secondly,it applies grounded theory to build a theoretical framework on perceiving the image of China's HSR in overseas market for the first time.There has not been any academic research on the perception framework of China's HSR,so this exploratory research intends to bridge this academic gap.Thirdly,the research suggests improvement strategies directly aiming at overcoming the negative images.Currently,most HSR internationalisation strategies start from "producers"-the country and the company-and try to make use of their strengths,which actually diverts from the market.This research,however,starts from the "market" and tries to make up for the weaknesses through improvement strategies aiming at the negative images.Therefore,those strategies are more pertinent and can better reflect the market needs,so as to more effectively establish a positive image of China's HSR in overseas market.