Ricky Y. K. Chan

Antecedents of green purchases: a survey in China

Examines the influence of cultural values, ecological affect and ecological knowledge on the green purchasing behavior of Chinese consumers. Using structural equation modeling to assess the significance that ecological affect and ecological knowledge have on green purchase intention and actual green purchase, the results demonstrate that a strong positive relationship exists. However, other important findings suggest that Chinese people’s level of ecological knowledge is low and actual green purchase behavior minimal. Yet in contrast, Chinese consumers express a positive ecological affect and green purchase intention. In relation to the hypothesis that the Chinese strongly adhere to the cultural value of living in harmony with nature, the relevant descriptive statistic shows that today’s Chinese only pay moderate allegiance to this “man‐nature” orientation. Moreover, this cultural value is only found to exert significant bearing on ecological affect but not ecological knowledge.

Fast Fashion, Sustainability, and the Ethical Appeal of Luxury Brands

Abstract The phrase “fast fashion” refers to low-cost clothing collections that mimic current luxury fashion trends. Fast fashion helps sate deeply held desires among young consumers in the industrialized world for luxury fashion, even as it embodies unsustainability. Trends run their course with lightning speed, with todays latest styles swiftly trumping yesterdays, which have already been consigned to the trash bin. This article addresses the inherent dissonance among fast fashion consumers, who often share a concern for environmental issues even as they indulge in consumer patterns antithetical to ecological best practices. Seemingly adept at compartmentalism, and free of conflicted guilt, such consumers see no contradiction in their Janus-faced desires. Can luxury fashion, with ostensibly an emphasis on authenticity, and its concomitant respect for artisans and the environment, foster values of both quality and sustainability? Since individual identity continually evolves, and requires a materially referential re-imagining of self to do so, we hypothesize that actual rather than faux luxury brands can, ironically, unite the ideals of fashion with those of environmental sustainability.

Relationship Marketing in China: Guanxi, Favouritism and Adaptation

One of the hot research topics today is relationship marketing. However, little research has been carried out in understanding the complex concepts of Guanxi (relationship) in a Chinese society. This research describes a study to operate the constructs of guanxi and explores the importance of guanxi in relationship development in order to present a new Guanxi framework. A study of both Western and Chinese literature provides foundations of the Guanxi perspectives. The constructs of adaptation, trust, opportunism and favour are identified. Adaptation and trust are found to be positively correlated with sales stability and quality. Whilst, adaptation is negatively correlated with relationship termination costs. Both theoretical framework (a new perceptual map) and managerial implications are given. In addition, recommendations for future research are made.

The Dynamics of Guanxi and Ethics for Chinese Executives

This study empirically examines how Chinese executives perceive the role of guanxi and ethics played in their business operations. By factor-analyzing 850 valid replies collected from a comprehensive survey, the present study identifies three distinct ethics-related attitudes and two distinct guanxi-related attitudes for Chinese executives. The cluster analysis of the composite scores of these five attitudinal factors further indicates the existence of three distinct groups of Chinese executives that vary in their ethics and guanxi orientations. The three groups are unethical profit seeker (UPS), anti-governance, guanxi-cultivator (AGGC), and apathetic executive (AE). The three groups are also found to be significantly different in such demographic characteristics as age and the ownership structure of the serving organization. Specifically, the inter-group comparison suggests that younger Chinese executives, and those working for privately-owned firms and joint ventures are more inclined to engage in unethical activities for profits. These findings provide useful insights for international investors to formulate their human resource and negotiation strategies in China.

Face, favour and positioning – a Chinese power game

This study is an initial attempt to look at the relationships among “inducement factors”, “face work” and “favour” from a Hong Kong‐China intra‐cultural negotiation environment. The model in this paper was modified from Hwangs paper on the same subject that has not been followed up in the past 13 years. The findings suggest that “face work” has four dimensions, namely “reciprocity”, “response”, “respect”, and “reputation”. Hong Kong negotiators, because of their similar ethnical background, manipulate these four dimensions to align themselves with powerful Chinese parties so as to help them negotiate through the complex Chinese relational society. They have three positions in the Chinese market, i.e. the impresser, smoother and cruel. By positioning themselves as “impressers”, the Hong Kong negotiators have the least psychic distance and transaction cost with their Chinese counterparts. Foreign negotiators are advised to use “face work” as a cultural strategy to help them negotiate through the complex business network in China. Also, they remember to practice this strategy widely because a not‐so‐important person may become a very important person in the future and therefore foreign negotiators will benefit on a longer term basis. They should also position themselves as “impresser” to give a modest image in the eyes of their Chinese counterparts. Modesty is highly valued in the Chinese society.

Purchasing behaviours and perceptions of environmentally harmful products

The green movement in newly industrialized countries often lags behind the West. While the green awareness has started to rise rapidly in some of these countries, the ability of attitudes to predict behaviour for environmentally sensitive products is questionable. A survey of 552 Hong Kong citizens was conducted to examine how consistent consumers’ actions were with their attitudes towards seven environmentally sensitive products. The results have shown that consumers’ environmental concern is not reflected in their purchasing behaviour. This calls for more education and initiative from both the government and businessmen to induce people to channel their attitudes into actions.

The effectiveness of environmental claims for services advertising

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to explore how different types of environmental claims may affect the communication effectiveness of environmental advertising. Two two moderating variables include the perceived eco‐friendly image of the originating country and consumer involvement.Design/methodology/approach – The examination involves the analysis of the responses of 1,200 subjects in Shanghai, China, to mock advertisements containing environmental claims using a 2 x 3 factorial design.Findings – Environmental claims enhance the communication effectiveness of advertisements for both high‐ and low‐involvement services. For high‐involvement services, substantive environmental claims generate more favorable attitudinal responses than do associative environmental claims.Research limitations/implications – This research focused on a single Chinese city and on two service categories with contrasting degrees of involvement. While such a confinement can enhance the internal validity of the findings, their ...

Publications in Major Marketing Journals: An Analysis of Research Productivity of Asia-Pacific Universities

The authors examine the marketing research productivity of Asia-Pacific universities using a set of 20 marketing journals during 1991-2000. A weighted Journal of Marketing-equivalent page count is used to account for different font and page sizes of the journals, different lengths in articles, coauthorships, and affiliations. A total of 106 universities are evaluated. The top 3 universities are, in order, the University of NewSouth Wales, the National University of Singapore, and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. School history does not seem to relate to research productivity. Indeed, several prominent universities are not ranked as highly as other more recently established ones. In achieving publication, the degree of research emphasis and research strategy of a university might play a more important role than years of operation. A majority of the top 20 Asia-Pacific universities have made significant progress in research output during 1991-2000.

A test of the Fishbein‐Ajzen behavioral intentions model under Chinese cultural settings: are there any differences between PRC and Hong Kong consumers?

This study attempts to examine the applicability of the Fishbein‐Ajzen behavioral intentions model under Chinese cultural settings. Linear structural equation modeling was utilized to test the competency of the model in explaining the intentions of Chinese consumers from the PRC and Hong Kong to purchase Chuk Kam (24 carat gold) finger rings. As a whole, the Fishbein‐Ajzen model explained well behavioral intentions under the cultural settings in question. Apart from the model’s general applicability in both the PRC and Hong Kong samples, a cross‐sample comparison seemed to suggest that the model performs slightly better in the more internationalized Hong Kong sample. Lastly, an examination of the relative influence of attitudes and subjective norms on consumption intentions revealed the collectivist culture of Chinese consumers. In view of this cultural characteristic, marketers are advised to take full advantage of the dynamics of opinion leadership in shaping the purchasing intentions of their target customers.

Counterfeit proneness: Conceptualisation and scale development

Abstract Counterfeiting is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world across a wide range of product categories, including music, movies, food, computer software, pharmaceuticals, fertilisers, and machinery parts. Prior research focuses on deceptive counterfeiting in which the consumers are not aware about buying counterfeit products, with little attention to non-deceptive counterfeiting in which consumers knowingly purchase counterfeit products. Most of this research is fragmented and exploratory in nature, resulting in mixed or inconclusive findings that leave many important questions unanswered. For example, it is still not clear why some customers are more prone to buying counterfeit products compared to others. We address this important gap by conceptualising counterfeit proneness (CFP), an individual-level psychological trait that relates closely with counterfeit purchase behaviour. We also develop a scale to measure this trait and validate it through a series of empirical studies. Finally, we discuss some limitations of our approach and directions for future research.