Julie Juan Li

How Face Influences Consumption - A Comparative Study of American and Chinese Consumers:

East Asia is fast becoming the world’s largest brand-name luxury goods market. This study develops the concept of face and face consumption to explain why Asian consumers possess strong appetites for luxury products despite their relatively low income. This paper distinguishes the concept of face from a closely related construct, prestige, and examines the influence of face on consumer behaviours in the United States and China. Due to the heavy influence of face, Asian consumers believe they must purchase luxury products to enhance, maintain or save face. Accordingly, face consumption has three unique characteristics: conformity, distinctiveness and other-orientation. The results of a cross-cultural survey support the existence of these three subdimensions and show that Chinese consumers are more likely to be influenced by their reference groups than are American consumers. Furthermore, they tend to relate product brands and price to face more heavily than do their US counterparts. In addition, Chinese consumers are more likely to consider the prestige of the products in other-oriented consumption than are their American counterparts.

Achieving Superior Financial Performance in China: Differentiation, Cost Leadership, or Both?

Firms operating in emerging economies must make appropriate marketing strategy choices to address the idiosyncratic challenges of rapid changes and institutional voids. The authors investigate when various types of marketing strategies work by examining the effects of both pure and dual strategies on financial performance for domestic versus foreign firms and across different market concentration levels in Chinas emerging economy. According to a survey of 249 firms, the effectiveness of specific strategy choices varies depending on domesticity and the level of market concentration. In particular, the impacts of both cost and dual strategies on financial performance are stronger for foreign firms than for domestic firms. Although cost-leadership and dual strategies are less effective in less concentrated markets than in more concentrated ones, the effect of a differentiation strategy is stronger when the level of market concentration is low rather than high.

The influence of institutional forces on international joint ventures' foreign parents' opportunism and relationship extendedness

Institutional forces influence the formation of international joint ventures (IJVs) in emerging economies and shape both their parents’ behaviors and their marketing strategies. Whereas previous research has centered on governance mechanisms that deter opportunism, this study investigates the influence of institutional forces (i.e., rule of law, government intervention, and dysfunctional competition) on the IJVs foreign parents opportunism. The authors find that rule of law and dysfunctional competition curtail opportunism, whereas government intervention drives opportunism. In addition, relationships between institutional forces in local markets and the IJVs foreign parents opportunism depend on the IJVs marketing capability. The authors further examine the influence of the foreign parents opportunism on IJV relationship extendedness and find support for a negative relationship between opportunism and the IJVs continuity. This study enriches institutional theory and identifies the boundary of the influence of institutional forces on opportunism. Because opportunism is a critical relationship hazard, the findings of this study have important implications for IJVs’ partnership management.