Jeff Jianfeng Wang

Materialism, status signaling, and product satisfaction

The consumer satisfaction literature has not, for the mos part, integrated individual values into the product evaluation process. Yet a comprehensive understanding of consumer satisfaction can best be attained by including both consumer and product factors. To demonstrate the usefulness of including individual values, this research focuses on one consumer value, namely, materialism. The authors empirically explore how this individual value is linked to consumers’ evaluations of products they have purchased. Using surveys, the authors collected data from a sample of college students (n=211) and a sample of adults (n=270). Across these two studies, using divergent samples and products, they find consistent evidence that materialism is negatively related to product satisfaction in product categories with high potential for status signaling, but unrelated to product satisfaction in product categories with lower potential for status signaling. The consumption goals that produce these product evaluations are empirically addressed

Immigration, culture, and ethnicity in transformative consumer research

Immigration, culture, and ethnicity (IC&E) research has a lengthy history in consumer research, though most research focuses narrowly on identity (and related topics) and has been done at the individual level of analysis. First, the authors discuss the need for research focused on assessing well-being at the collective level and highlight the important role of social networks and communities in improving consumer well-being and creating effective policy interventions. Next, they explore the utility of the emerging intersectionality conceptual framework for research on well-being and IC&E. They offer specific suggestions for designing policy-oriented research using this approach and illustrate the process by taking a well-regarded IC&E study and reimagining its design using a process-centered approach to intersectionality.

Consumer Vulnerability and Marketplace Exclusion: A Case of Rural Migrants and Financial Services in China

With urbanization and the ongoing migration of people from rural regions to urban areas, marketplaces have become increasingly diverse and complex. Rural migrants face numerous challenges in a complex marketplace, and they are likely to become vulnerable consumers. By using ethnographic methods, this study examines Chinese rural migrants, the so-called “urban villagers.” We find that structural barriers, including government policies and rules imposed by institutions, restrict rural migrants’ acquisition of financial products in urban marketplaces. As a result, they often turn to their social networks and traditional resources. Their reliance on social ties, however, limits their acculturation and adaptation into the urban environment. We conclude with public policy suggestions that aim to improve rural migrants’ opportunities for consumption and well-being.

Creating and sustaining a culture of hope: Feng Shui discourses and practices in Hong Kong

This ethnographic study of Feng Shui discourses and practices in Hong Kong examines consumer hope embedded within a specific sociocultural context, supplanting the current understanding of hope as purely an individual psychic phenomenon. The study investigates hope as a collective emotion, informed by key Chinese cultural resources drawn from Taoist and Confucian principles in both its pursuit and desired outcomes. As consumers incorporate hope within their lives and aspirational selves, they act within culturally prescribed pathways of prevailing social and moral rules. The research demonstrates the importance of culturally pervasive discourses in developing an overall sense of hope, one created, interpreted, and sustained within social networks. In the process, we also pay attention to the idea that in hope something still has to happen or become.

Regulating political symbols: China's advertising law and politicized advertising

ABSTRACT Advertising regulation in china contains political and ideological nuances. despite evolution of its advertising law and years of practice dealing with various codes, advertisers still find it daunting to decipher the regulations after years of practice. The ideological components of chinas advertising law require careful analysis of political correctness and cultural appropriateness. In this paper, the authors use semiotic analysis to consider both advertising that has violated ideological rules and advertising that has successfully transmitted desired ideological messages. And the authors have selected four advertising cases that help clarify the perceptions regarding political ideology in china.

Performance Theory and Consumer Engagement: Wine-Tourism Experiences in South Africa and India

Abstract Purpose: This paper uses performance theory to explore how wine-tourism experiences are orchestrated by wine tour guides to encourage engagement of consumers. It describes how such orchestration is built on material elements such as landscapes, architecture, vineyards, production facilities, and wine tastings. Design/methodology/approach: A multi-layer ethnographic research on wine-tourism was employed. The interviews, observations, and field notes were analyzed through the lens of performance theory. A constant comparative method was used to identify emergent patterns, and a hermeneutic method was used to interpret the data. Findings: The paper builds on performance theory and delineates the ways in which guides co-create intense experiences with participants. It portrays how tour guides often adjust their theatrical scripts to consumers’ unique needs through creative variations: surprise treats, activities, and personal stories. When guides take pleasure in tours, participants do as well, resulting in memorable co-created experiences. The tours feature processes such as pitching and relation-building techniques that call upon identity, morality, and materiality scripts, which ultimately build a sense of social obligation among participants toward tour guides and winery staff. Originality/value: From a theoretical perspective, the paper adds value to the discussion of performance in tourism by suggesting that the service blueprint, architecture, and employee training are only part of the story. This paper shows how consumer engagement and interactions between participants, guides, architecture, and landscapes are essential elements of memorable experiences. Research limitations: Like other studies, there are limitations to our study as well. Our study only included one-day wine tours. A broader investigation of strategic alliances between tour companies and wineries, and how wine tourists experience and sustain a sense of social obligations to the wineries they visit, will provide further insights into how wine-tourism functions as a co-creative emergent form of consumption involving individuals, products, and processes.

Will You Get What You Want? Managerial Ties, Knowledge Acquisition and Firm Performance in China

Integrating research in knowledge-based view and resource-dependence theory, this study proposes that the utilization of business ties differs significantly from that of political ties in acquiring external knowledge, which subsequently affects firm performance in supplier-distributor alliances. Specifically, we argue that the utilization of business ties enables suppliers to access deeper knowledge from distributors, while the utilization of political ties facilitates suppliers to acquire broader knowledge from distributors. As a result, the knowledge acquisition mediates the influences of managerial ties on firm performance. Further, the power structure between suppliers and distributors moderates the impacts of managerial ties on knowledge acquisitions. Our analyses of matched dyads of suppliers and distributors in China largely support our theses in this study.

CELEBRITIES AS HUMAN BRANDS: AN INQUIRY ON STAKEHOLDER-ACTOR CO-CREATION OF BRAND IDENTITIES

This paper examines the co-creation of human brands identities exemplified by celebrities in a stakeholder-actor approach. By bringing together the theoretical web of service-dominant logic, stakeholder theory, actor-network theory, and consumer culture theory, we argue that human brand identities are co-created by multiple stakeholder-actors that have resources and incentives in the activities that make a up an enterprise of a human brand, including the celebrities themselves, consumer-fans, and business entities. By utilizing an observational, archival netnographic data from popular social media channels, four exemplars of celebrity identities from the Philippines demonstrate the co-creation of human brands. Findings illustrate key stakeholder-actors’ participations, production and consumption, and integrations of resources and incentives in the co-creation process as articulated in social media. The co-creation process happens through sociological translations codes namely: social construction and negotiation of identities, parasocialization, influence projection, legitimization, and utilization of human brand identities. These dynamics of human brand identity advance a stakeholder-actor paradigm of service co-creation that is adaptive to the predominant consumer culture and human ideals that surround the celebrity. Implications and future research on celebrity brand marketing management are discussed.