Consumers' Attitudes Towards Professional Advertising in Hong Kong

ABSTRACT

This research was designed to investigate consumers' attitudes towards professional advertising in Hong Kong. Three hundred consumers were surveyed on their attitudes towards professional advertising by accountants, doctors and lawyers practicing in Hong Kong. The results found that, in general, professionals in Hong Kong enjoyed a high image and consumers believed that advertising would not significantly affect the current favourable image enjoyed by professionals in Hong Kong. In addition, consumers believed that professional advertising could serve as a means to acquire information. However, they also believed that advertising would increase the cost of professional services.     

Homeownership as a Sign of Immigrants’ Consumer Acculturation: The Role of Region of Origin

ABSTRACT

One of the limitations highlighted by the consumer acculturation literature is the lack of empirical research to identify better constructs or indicators of consumer acculturation. In this article, the use of homeownership by immigrants in the host society is proposed as an indicator of advanced consumer acculturation. The decision to own a home by a minority group, such as immigrants, represents a key landmark in the process of adaptation to the new culture and a commitment with the host country's values and culture. The empirical case used is the immigrant population of Spain. The sharp rise in its foreign-born population during the last decade and the significantly higher homeownership rates of natives in comparison with other countries makes the Spanish scenario a relevant case study. The results obtained show homeownership is linked to features associated with highly acculturated consumers. Moreover, the analysis conducted reveals important differences in the way immigrants from different origins advance in their consumer acculturation processes and suggest distinct approaches when marketing to these groups.     

Market Orientation and Business Performance in the PRC

Abstract

This study examined the applicability of Narver and Slater's market (1992) orientation model across different economies (planned versus market economy). First, we assessed the scale properties of market orientation from different cities in Mainland China (Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou). Second, we then tested the relationship between market orientation and business performance. Tests for convergent, discriminant and predictive validity across the four Chinese economies with different market environments were supported by our findings. On the other hand, the impact of market orientation on business performance were found to be different across the four cities.     

The Impact of Acculturation on Immigrants’ Business Ethics Attitudes

This study explores to what extent immigrants adopt the business ethical attitudes of their host country and/or maintain those of their country of origin. For countries that have significant immigration, acculturation is an important social issue. An immigrant’s acculturation is influenced through the ability to adapt his/her “ethical culture of origin” by integrating it with the host country’s ethical culture. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of the role of acculturation on immigrant’s ethical attitudes. What happens to individuals, who have developed in one cultural context, when they attempt to live in a new cultural context? Three groups were the object of this study: (1) native students of business administration in Israel, (2) students of business administration in the Ukraine and (3) business students in Israel who had emigrated from the Ukraine. Samples of these student populations allowed the study of acculturation effects on the immigrants as they acclimated to Israeli society. Results showed that students living in the Ukraine had the lowest ethical attitudes, followed by Ukraine immigrants in Israel. Israeli-born students had significantly higher ethical attitudes than either of the two Ukrainian groups. Accordingly, the ethical perceptions of immigrant students showed that they were influenced by both their home and host cultures. According to Berry’s (Appl Psychol Int Rev 46(1): 5–68, 1997) model of acculturation strategies, integration was their preferred strategy. The implications of these results and guidelines for further research are suggested.     

Dynamic and Responsive Firm Strategy

Abstract

Since the opening of China in 1980, Hong Kong manufacturing industries collaborated with China manufacturing industries to maintain a low-cost labor intensive strategy. The strategy seems to be sufficient in maintaining the global competitive advantage of Hong Kong for the past two decades. However, with the rapid organizational learning of the Chinese partner and the reluctance of the Hong Kong partner to upgrade technology, Hong Kong manufacturing industries are facing the risk of potential loss of competitive advantages. This article attempts to review this dynamic evolution of HK/China collaborations and suggest some future actions for Hong Kong manufacturing industries to maintain their competitiveness. At the same time, the article also provides some ideas for global investors to rethink their future firm strategies in China.     

Ten Years of ‘Social Media Marketing’ Research in the Journal of Promotion Management: Research Synthesis,Emerging Themes,and New Directions

The study synthesizes research in emerging social media marketing domains by analyzing published articles on social media marketing in the Journal of Promotion Management published since 2007. We utilized interpretation and synthesis based assessment for examining the usage of social media marketing concepts with a focus on social media, social networking sites' utilization by firms, social media metrics and social media measurement, consumer decision making, consumer perceptions, and utilizing social media marketing across countries and cultures. We found a fair balance of application of social media variables across studies, even though most of these studies were quantitative. After studying the gaps presented in social media based studies of recently published articles, we present emerging social media marketing themes, new research foci and directions, and tried to build on research implications for both theory and practice.     

Culturally Customizing Websites for Immigrant Communities in the United States

Recent research suggests that the customization of online marketing messages to meet the cultural preferences of immigrant communities increases preferences for those messages. Level of acculturation may be used as a segmentation variable that accounts for this effect, with lower levels of acculturation matching the preference for the home country's culture in marketing messages. Comparisons between Asian- and Hispanic-American preferences across levels of acculturation are made, and possible convergences in preferences through acculturation are examined. The results indicate that Taiwanese-Americans have culturally-rooted preferences for web content based on their acculturation levels. Furthermore, the study shows that the web content preferences of Taiwanese- and Hispanic-American consumers converge as members of these groups acculturate.     

Managerial Values and Practices Sharing Common Cultural Heritage: A Comparison of Cultural Values in Hong Kong,Taiwan and the People's Republic of China

ABSTRACT

This paper explores managerial values and practices in three rapidly growing economies in Asia: Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the People's Republic of China. Differences and similarities in six cultural dimensions were investigated. Although participants in the present study share a common cultural heritage, their cultural values may be very different. Implications for cross-cultural research and practical applications are explored.     

Academy of Marketing Conference 2002 The Marketing Landscape: Signposts for the Future

Abstract

This paper addresses previous calls for research to investigate the relationship between acculturation, consumption, and religion. Specifically, this paper argues that previous research investigating these relationships amongst ethnic minorities may have deliberately ignored religious differences for convenience. This paper investigates Indians living in Britain, drawn from India's three main religions: Hinduism, Islam, and Sikhism. Using an ethno-consumerist framework, we interviewed sixteen, second-generation Indian women living in Britain, who were matched in terms of their acculturation, socio-economic backgrounds, and level of religiosity. The data analysis showed subtle but important divergences between the religions, with Hindu participants' religion having little influence on their consumption, whilst Sikh participants consumed products that affirmed an ethnic rather than religious identity. In contrast, Muslim participants consumed products that they felt rejected their Indian cultural identity and affirmed their British and Muslim identities. A number of marketing findings and limitations are presented.     

Observing viewers’ self-reported and neurophysiological responses to message appeal in social media advertisements

PurposeMarketing research mainly uses self-reported method to record respondents' perceptions of creativity, and while self-reported method has its own merits, there exists some critique, particularly in terms of its ability to adequately capture the influence of message appeal on creativity. This paper studies how viewers’ responses to message appeals in social media advertisement compare in terms of self-reported responses versus responses taken through a neurophysiological method of Electroencephalograph (EEG).MethodologyTwo social media advertisements are displayed through a laboratory experiment to 17 subjects observing the subjects' neurophysiological reactions as well as their self-reported responses with regard to the commercials’ emotional, informational, and brand-related content.FindingsResults show that neurophysiological method offers unique details about emotional appeal, which the self-reported method fails to reflect. Furthermore, the neurophysiological measure identifies differences across the two target commercials in the emotional content part, which again are not identified through the self-reported method.OriginalityThis paper advances advertising research in social media literature by comparing content evaluation within advertisement through neurophysiological and self-reported measure. These findings have implications for marketers to use and measure message appeals in advertisement on social media to influence consumer response.     

Cultural Values Driven Segmentation in Social Marketing

ABSTRACT

This article examines the role of cultural values in segmentation in social marketing, with a special focus on minority and immigrant groups. It offers a framework for values driven segmentation in social marketing. Since social marketing seeks to create behavior change, it needs to refocus on modalities that can bring about the desired behavioral change. Cultural values that distinguish and define cultural groups are perhaps the most critical, especially in multicultural environments. The values of various subcultures, their ethnic identities and cultural heritage have become important driving forces for social marketers in their quest to bring about behavioral change. Though the article focuses on social marketing to minority and immigrant subcultures, the values driven segmentation model can be validly applied to other cultural groups as well.     

Motherhood in migration: schools as acculturation agents

ABSTRACT

Motherhood roles lie at the intersection of gender, professional, family, and social identities and are highly contextualized in culture, making them particularly relevant for acculturation success. We provide an empirical example of how schools act as acculturation agents, using the experiences of career-oriented migrant mothers whose children attend elite private schools in Santiago, Chile. This study contributes to consumer acculturation research and to research on matricentric feminism, which positions mothers’ concerns as the starting point for theories, politics, and practices of empowerment. We employ Turner's notion of root paradigms to discuss how schools maneuver their unique institutional agentic power, acculturating career-oriented migrant mothers and their families into a cultural framework of female domesticity and intensive mothering.     

Practising gender: The role of banter in young men’s improvisations of masculine consumer identities

Abstract

Although consumer researchers have explored the social, cultural and consumption-related tensions involved in being and becoming masculine, prior research has tended to focus on individual men’s experiences. This paper reviews literature in this area together with theories of gender as performed, performative and social practice. Our ethnographic study of male friendship groups in central Scotland explores the gender processes involved in improvising their masculine consumer identities within and across various social settings and interactions. In particular, through consumption-related banter, they played for and played with their ideas of masculinity, thereby engaging in the practising of gender. The boundaries between ‘safe’ and ‘danger’ zones of consumption varied across social groups and contexts, highlighting the complexity and contingency of contemporary masculinities.     

Women's Magazines: Construction of Identities and Cultural Consumption in Hong Kong

Consumption is an integral part of contemporary capitalistic society. By means of a textual analysis of letters to the editor of a women's magazine in Hong Kong, as well as in-depth interviews with readers and editors, this paper examines how women's cultural consumption creates, constructs and circulates women's identities. Results reveal that the processes of identification can be constructed on three equivalent consumption levels. Firstly, women readers identify certain "imaginary communities" through reading the magazine, and by modeling the behaviors and styles of the communities they feel they are sustaining their relationship with them. Secondly, women identify with an idealized community-constructed beauty and seek to consume products which collectively suggests this idealized beauty for them. Thirdly, women regard the "communities" as providing shelter for rapport and comfort from the emotional and relational problems of real life. In sum, structured identification-consumption has shaped working class women into an identity, which conforms to society's dominant capitalist logic. Despite these findings, however, there are always a few women who attempt to seek alternative lifestyles.     

Dirt of whitewashing: re-conceptualising debtors’ obligations in Chinese business by transplanting bankruptcy law to early British Hong Kong (1860s–1880s)

This article, drawing on a wide range of archived materials, and using one of the earliest sets of English business law imported to Hong Kong – the Bankruptcy Ordinance of 1864 – as a case study, argues that the transplantation of the English bankruptcy regime into early colonial Hong Kong was contrary to the business interests of both the European and Chinese communities and wrongfully displaced the traditional Chinese business norms and practices that had contributed to the health of the colonial economy prior to the regime's introduction. This article constitutes one of the first empirical studies to place English business law and its widely acknowledged contribution to the economy of early colonial Hong Kong under scrutiny. From the perspective of the relationship between English law and former British colonies’ development of business modernity, the findings presented herein contradict the readily accepted notion that English business law provided a solid legal infrastructure upon which colonial Hong Kong's prosperity and economic growth were built and call for more nuanced studies of the positive role of Chinese legal traditions in Hong Kong's development of business modernity in its early colonial period.     

Dining Chinese

Abstract

With the growing popularity and consumption of Chinese cuisine, it is crucial for restaurateurs to acquire knowledge of consumer expectations and dining satisfaction. The purposes of this study were: to determine patrons' perceptions and attitudes Chinese restaurant dining and to determine if there is a difference between diners of Chinese descent, other Asians, and all other patrons with regard to their expectations concerning dining at Chinese restaurants. A structured questionnaire was used to determine the dining preferences of 192 customers of eight full service Chinese restaurants. The results indicated that slightly over 60% of the respondents considered themselves to be knowledgeable of Chinese regional cooking. Fifty-one percent of the respondents felt that the food in the restaurants was similar to the food prepared in restaurants in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan; however, 53% said the food was adjusted for American taste. Over 63% of the respondents wanted the restaurant to appear somewhat authentic. It was found that there were no significant differences between the subgroupsstudiedonthe questions.     

Out of the Mouths of Babes: Business Ethics and Youths in Asia

A model of corporate ethics and social responsibility (CESR) was developed and empirically tested among Chinese business undergraduates in Hong Kong and Singapore. As predicted, it was found that CESR beliefs were negatively related to Machiavellianism and two Confucian concepts, guanxi (interpersonal connections) and mianzi (face). CESR beliefs were also lower among Hong Kong than Singaporean youths. The negative effects of guanxi, mianzi, and Machiavellianism were more pronounced for the Hong Kong than Singapore sample. Implications of these findings are discussed and directions for future research suggested.     

Hong Kongers’ cross-border consumption and shopping in Shenzhen: patterns and motivations

The phenomenon that many Hong Kong people cross the border to shop and consume in Shenzhen has recently drawn great public attention in Hong Kong. In an attempt to understand the nature of this phenomenon and to shed further light on cross-border consumption and shopping in general, this paper investigates the patterns and motivations of Hong Kong people's consumption and shopping in Shenzhen. A negative binomial model is developed to evaluate the effects of motivational factors and socio-economic characteristics on the frequency of cross-border trips. Results of the study indicate that Hong Kongers’ cross-border consumption and shopping activities in Shenzhen were both functional and recreational.     

An empirical investigation of immigrant effects: the experience of firms operating in the emerging markets

The immigrant effect consists of the ‘employer’ and the ‘employee’ effect. This study focuses on the ‘employee’ effect. Existing studies on the immigrant effect have identified its contributions to international trade and international marketing management but have not explained under what circumstances this effect can be used to achieve a firm's objectives when operating in a foreign market. This study explores the profile of the firms which have used this effect to assist their operations in three foreign host markets (China, Hong Kong and Taiwan). Based on the outcomes of a multivariate logistic regression analysis, this study has generated a number of useful findings. Firm size is not suggested as a factor for the selection of immigrant effects. Firms are more likely to adopt an immigrant effect when their products are new to the markets. FDI mode users tend to be more likely to use the immigrant effect. Usage of immigrant effects is also found to be associated with firms from a smaller domestic economy. The immigrant effect is often used to break cultural barriers between home and host markets, but is more helpful when the marketing infrastructure in the home and host markets is similar. The choice of immigrant effect is suggested to have no influence on firms' performance in the host markets.     

Young adults' perceptions of product placement in films: An exploratory comparison between the United Kingdom and Hong Kong

Even though young adults are a major audience of films and the main target group for product placement, very few studies explore how youngsters across cultures perceive and interpret this marketing communication tool. This study explores this issue through thirty-two in-depth interviews conducted in the United Kingdom and Hong Kong. The comparative analysis focused on four aspects: (1) young consumers' movie consumption habits and their exposure to product placement; (2) their general views towards product placement and advertising; (3) their perception of different execution styles of product placement and its impact and (4) the regulatory and ethical concerns of product placement. Results indicate that the young generation actively engages in interpreting brand integration in films and they were generally positive about it. Although interpretations of product placement are reported on an individual basis, this study suggests that culture may also affect how individuals perceive product placement. This exploratory study raises important issues about cultural differences in the perception of brands placed in films and provides insights for further research in the area of product placement.