The Psychology of the Asian Consumer

Bernd Schmitt, Leonard Lee

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317514893
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Marketing internazionale
• Index: Business

Why is it important to conduct research on the psychology of the Asian consumer? What research themes have already emerged? What are the relevant theories and practical applications based on this research? These are some of the questions and issues addressed in this unique book. With chapters written by experts in their field, The Psychology of the Asian Consumer highlights how consumer psychology can contribute to an understanding of Asian consumer behaviour and is especially timely in light of today's global economy and its focus on the Pacific Rim. Chapters are organised around the key concepts of theory and culture and include numerous case studies and practical applications. The book focuses on research summaries that provide readers with important, need-to-know information.

1

Why the Asian Consumer?

BERND SCHMITT

Why should consumer psychologists care about the Asian consumer? There is a simple practical answer to this question. Numerous economists have identified the East Asia region as one of the major growth engines for the world economy. Consequently, if the predictions of their economic studies are accurate, consumers in this region will be a dominant force in the world economy in the twenty-first century.

The Century of the Asian Consumer

Consider the following numbers and statistics. China has grown on average 9 percent annually since 1979 when it embarked on its open door policy and began experimenting with capitalism and market forces. It has lifted over 620 million of its people out of extreme poverty, and in 2010 became the world’s second-largest economy after the United States, overtaking Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and all the rest of Western Europe. Admittedly, growth in other Asian countries (e.g., India and Indonesia) has been positive as well, though not as impressive as that in China. There have been bumps and roadblocks. Nonetheless, most economists taking a long-term perspective expect the future of Asian markets to be very positive. Using historical data and economic forecasts, Danny Quay, professor of economics and international development at the London School of Economics, contends that the economic center of gravity will drift eastward, and by 2050 will have moved from the United States and Western Europe to the East, or 1.5 times the radius of the planet to a point between China and India (Quay, 2010). Megachange: The World in 2050, published by The Economist, predicts that, by 2050, Asia will be the dominant force in the world economy.

From a historical perspective, China’s emerging status as the world’s leading economy will not be a novelty. It was by far the world’s largest economy until the nineteenth century (in terms of purchasing power parity) accounting for 20–30 percent of the world’s output. Along with India, it dominated the world economy for nearly two millennia…. By 2050, these two economies will have resumed that dominance. If the forecast presented here is anywhere near right, developing Asia as a whole will by mid-century account for something close to half of the world’s output. Prepare for the Asian century. (Franklin and Andrews, 2012, p. 180)

At the center of these developments is the Asian consumer. A 2011 study by the Asian Development Bank found that by 2030 an additional 3 billion Asians will enjoy living standards similar to those in Europe and the United States today. Assuming a conservative growth rate of 5.5 percent, China’s per capita income (at purchasing power parity) alone would then be around USD 33,000—an increase from around USD 11,000 in 2010—and about the same as current per capita income in the European Union. As a whole, the Chinese economy would be about twice the size of the U.S. economy. Some of China’s consumption figures today are already mind-boggling: with a population of 1.3 billion people, China has 900 million mobile phone users, and the number of annual car sales is higher than in any other country. Middle-class consumption is also predicted to be strong in other Asian markets. A 2010 study by the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) Development Center, combining household survey data with growth projections for 145 countries, shows that Asia could account for over 40 percent of global middle-class consumption.

Given these extraordinary developments, it seems of paramount importance that consumer researchers begin to understand the Asian consumer and the behavior of the rapidly rising middle class in Asia. Will emerging Asian consumers behave like Western consumers when their incomes rise? How will their values and motivations change? How will they make decisions and shop for products and brands?

But Wait, Aren’t We Supposed to Develop General Theories?

For most consumer psychologists, the practical significance of Asian consumers may not be enough of a reason or justification for engaging in research on them. Many consumer psychologists view their jobs as developing and testing general theories—theories that apply to all consumers (and not any specific consumer group)—and do not need to be necessarily practically relevant.

Fortunately, there are at least three additional reasons for engaging in research on Asian consumers even if one considers the purpose of the field to be theoretical (rather than practical) and focused on consumers in general (rather than specific groups).

First, by conducting research on Asian consumers, it will be possible to put our presumably general theories and principles of consumer psychology to a test. Are those consumer-psychology models and theories, which we have frequently derived from psychological theories and tested with Western consumers, in fact generally applicable and universal? Or are they a matter of historical coincidence and constrained by specific commercial environments and cultural contexts that consumers are facing? I don’t mean to raise this point in a flippant way (“Cross-cultural differences, anybody?”). Rather, the environmental and contextual worlds that Asian consumers face today may be radically different from those that we constructed in Western lab experiments and field studies. These different circumstances may affect the type, speed, and ease of processing effective responses as well as purchase behaviors that we may observe. For example, the current world in Asia is one that is complex and rapidly changing, where multicultural traditions contrast with disruptive innovation, where the world of the countryside clashes with ultramodern cityscapes, and where the familiar is undermined by global influences—in other words, a world where categories of time and place are in constant flux and where identity needs to be constantly renegotiated and reconstructed. Such an environment seems quite different from the relatively straightforward, linear, and familiar world in which Western (especially American) consumers have grown up and to which they are accustomed. As a result, the basic categories to construct commercial reality as well as the processes used to make sense of such a reality may differ to some degree between Asian and American consumers. In sum, studies of Asian consumers are likely to help us enrich, and potentially revise, existing consumer psychology models and theories.

Second, some consumer phenomena may emerge almost exclusively in Asia and others may show up there first. As a result, Asian consumer behavior may be the ideal place to develop theory and conduct empirical work about these unique or new consumer phenomena. Take China’s one-child policy, a generational experiment of unprecedented proportions with currently unpredictable behavioral consequences. It may be oddly habit-forming to be an only child, growing up in a society of millions of other only children. As a result, a one-child society may be a unique testing ground for studying the relation between government policies, social norms, mental schemata, and consumer behavior. Or imagine growing up in a society (South Korea) where in one year alone 20 percent of the population engages in some sort of plastic surgery. How would that change an individual’s view of beauty, body, and the self? Or consider kawaii—the multifaceted, linguistically complex, and widely present concept of “cuteness” that was invented in Japan and is now being exported to other Asian countries. How does Kawaii relate to self-construal and brand perception, and about consumer communities and celebrity influence?

Third, if we conduct cross-cultural research within Asia rather than engaging in “East-West comparisons,” we may contribute to developing yet another important theoretical and methodological issue. Should all Asian consumers be considered the same (say, as “collectivists” or people with “interdependent selves”) and be contrasted with “Westerners” (also lumped together as “individualists” or people with “independent selves”)? Or are there key differences among Asian consumers? Are we justified, or not, in aggregating across Asian markets, countries, and cultures (and Western markets, for that matter), and randomly pick one location in Asia and the West, as we have done for many years in cross-cultural research? Or do we need to adopt a more differentiated point of view because multiple cultural dimensions may be at play in shaping consumer behavior, which may not justify such a simple scheme. By conducting intra-Asian studies and examining both the similarities and differences among Asian consumers, we could find out and determine which cultural dimensions allow for an East–West comparison and which dimensions may benefit from drawing different groupings.

To stimulate research on these topics, and many others, Leonard Lee and I organized a conference with the Society of Consumer Psychology (SCP) on the “Asian consumer” in Singapore in 2012 and coedited this book, which is based on the conference.

The Eighth Sin

In a noteworthy—and much noted—presidential address three months after our conference, SCP’s outgoing president, Professor Michel Pham, laid out what he called “The Seven Sins of Consumer Psychology.” According to Pham (2013), these Seven Sins are “(1) a narrow conception of the scope of consumer behavior research; (2) adoption of a narrow set of theoretical lenses; (3) adherence to a narrow epistemology of consumer research; (4) an almost exclusive emphasis on psychological processes as opposed to psychological content; (5) a strong tendency to over-generalize from finite empirical results, both as authors and as reviewers; (6) a predisposition to design studies based on methodological convenience rather than on substantive considerations; and (7) a pervasive confusion between ‘theories of studies’ and studies of theories.”

Within the context of the study of the Asian consumer, the field as a whole has committed an “eighth sin”—of blindly neglecting the rich insights that may be gained by stepping out of a Western consumer context and considering seriously the multifaceted Asian consumer culture. I trust that, with the conference and this book, we have done penance and are ready to reconcile the mainstream thinking of consumer psychology with the practical needs and broad-based theoretical potential of research on Asian consumers.

Acknowledgment

The section “The Century of the Asian Consumer” is based, in part, on research from Bernd Schmitt’s book, The Changing Face of the Asian Consumer.

References

Franklin, D., and Andrews, J. (Eds.). (2012). Megachange: The World in 2050. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Published by The Economist.

Pham, Michel. (2003). The seven sins of consumer psychology. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 23(4), 411–423.

Quay, Danny. (2010). The shifting distribution of global economic activity. Working paper, London School of Economics.

2

Emerging Research Themes on the Asian Consumer

LEONARD LEE

The rise of Asia is a well-recognized economic trend. In retail, in particular, demand for consumer products in Asia has seen exponential growth as spending power and desire for a better quality of life continue to escalate (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2013). Today, countries such as China, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines are home to some of the largest malls in the world. As the world watches closely the growth of Asia (Jorgenson, 2013; Studwell, 2013), marketing scholars have been attempting to obtain a deeper understanding of the minds and hearts of Asian consumers, to understand what makes them tick and how marketers can influence their purchase and consumption decisions (Nisbett, 2004; Shavitt, Lee, and Torelli, 2008).

Building upon research on the impact of culture in consumer psychology as well as research in consumer behavior, in this chapter I highlight the emerging research themes that are of particular relevance to the Asian consumer. Two important qualifications in this attempt are noteworthy. First, rather than cultural psychology in general (Chiu and Hong, 2007), this chapter focuses on examining the influence of culture on consumer psychology, in particular that of Asian consumers. Second, this chapter identifies emerging research themes germane to Asian consumers, using selected empirical findings from marketing articles published in the past five years to illustrate these themes; it does not provide an exhaustive review of research in cross-cultural consumer psychology (for recent comprehensive reviews of cross-cultural consumer psychology, see Shavitt, Lee, and Johnson, 2008; Shavitt et al., 2008b); rather, it reviews recent work that lies at the intersection of cultural psychology and a number of important domains in consumer behavior such as emotions, brand attitudes, consumer values, and consumer decision making.

Theme 1: The Impact of Self-Construal on Marketing Responses

Among the various dimensions of culture that Geert Hofstede (1980), a pioneer of cross-cultural psychology, identifies in his seminal work, the distinction between individualistic cultures and collectivistic cultures is no doubt the dimension that researchers have most pervasively used to compare cultures. Whereas people in individualistic cultures (e.g., North Americans) value independence and attach higher priority to personal goals than to group goals, those in collectivistic cultures (e.g., East Asians) value interdependent connections with others and view group goals as more important than their personal goals. Correspondingly, people in individualistic cultures tend to have an independent self-construal, perceiving themselves as autonomous and unique, while those in collectivistic cultures have an interdependent self-construal, perceiving themselves as members of a larger social group (Markus and Kitayama, 1991). Further, people in more collectivistic (vs. individualistic) cultures (e.g., East Asians) tend to process information more holistically (vs. ana...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Why the Asian Consumer?
• 2 Emerging Research Themes on the Asian Consumer
• Part I Conceptual Models and Theories
• Part II Cultural Differences in Consumer Behavior
• Part III Diverse Consumer Behavior Among Asian Cultures
• Part IV Current Practices
• Index
• About the Editors and Contributors