Consumer-citizens of China : : the role of foreign brands in the imagined future China / / Kelly Tian and Lily Dong.

• Author: Tian, Kelly.
• TeilnehmendeR: Dong, Lily.
• Year of Publication: 2011
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Routledge Contemporary China Series ; 60.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (xviii, 147 pages) :; digital, PDF file(s).
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record and e-publication (viewed on March 19, 2019).

This book presents a comprehensive examination of Chinese consumer behaviour and challenges the previously dichotomous interpretation of the consumption of Western and non-Western brands in China. The dominant position is that Chinese consumers are driven by a desire to imitate the lifestyles of Westerners and thereby advance their social standing locally. The alternative is that consumers reject Western brands as a symbolic gesture of loyalty to their nation-state. Drawing from survey responses and in depth interviews with Chinese consumers in both rural and urban areas, Kelly Tian and Lily Dong find that consumers situate Western brands within select historical moments. This embellishment attaches historical meanings to Western brands in ways that render them useful in asserting preferred visions of the future China. By highlighting how Western brands are used in contests for national identity, Consumer-Citizens of China challenges the notion of the "patriot’s paradox" and answers scholars’ questions as to whether Chinese nationalists today allow for a Sino-Western space where the Chinese can love China without hating the West. Consumer-Citizens of China will be of interest to students and scholars of business studies, Chinese and Asian Studies and Political Science.

Table of Contents

1. Imagining China, imagining brands -- 2. Rethinking popular notions of Chinese consumers' motives for responding to Western brands -- 3. Highlighted moments in the history of branded goods in China -- 4. Foreign brands in China as global brands from the imagined West -- 5. Chinese national narratives and the meanings of Western brands -- 6. National narratives in imaginative processing of Western brand promotions -- 7. Citizen-consumers in an age of globalization.