Understanding Chinese Consumer Behaviour Towards New Products

摘要

Despite an increasing interest in the Chinese market by Western companies, few studies have analysed the behaviour of Chinese con-sumers. The application of Western consumer behaviour modeis to explain Chinese consumer behaviours involves some methodo-logical problems that can be solved by opera-tionalising latent constructs in a culturally meaningful way. This study expands on a the-ory of the reasoned action-based adoption in-tention model, integrating the Chinese values of "group conformity" and "face consumption." The influence of innovativeness and the ex-perience of consumers is also investigated. The survey object are consumer electronics (iPhone). To test the model, a sample of 382 Chinese university students from Shanghai participated in an online survey. The analysis was accomplished through structural equa-tion modelling. The results show strong evi-dence of the culture-specific adoption model and confirm the strong influence of face consumption on the consumer adoption intention. Finally, the implications for marketers and re-searchers are discussed.