Introduction
In spite of or even because of the Asian economic crisis, Asian markets offer vast opportunities encompassing some 25 per cent of the world’s economic output and 50 per cent of its population. Few international firms can ignore Asia as a market of primary importance. To be able to address these markets effectively, one has to understand the underlying cultural dimensions, their values, beliefs and motivations, the information processing and learning styles, perceptions and attitudes, which are all heavily influenced by or even driven by culture. These aspects of consumer behaviour have profound implications for the marketing mix.
Schuette and Ciarlante do a good job in introducing the reader to consumer behaviour in Asia. The authors emphasise the importance of developing alternative consumer behaviour models for Asian markets. Drawing on the extant literature on Asian consumers, psychology and culture, the authors explore how “Asianised” consumer behaviour models and theories could be applied to various aspects of marketing such as research, segmentation, positioning, and the marketing mix.
Structure and content of the book
The importance of recognising consumer behaviour in Asia as distinctively different from that in the West is demonstrated in the first chapter. A key theme throughout this chapter, and indeed the entire book, is that consumer behaviour is strongly influenced by culture. Using Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and Trompenaars’ value orientations models, the authors show how Asian cultures are fundamentally different from those of the West. The remainder of the book can broadly be structured into two main parts. Chapters 2 to 4 provide the foundation for understanding Asian cultures and consumer behaviour, whereas Chapters 5 to 8 discuss their implications for marketers.
Chapter 2 explores the distinguishing features of Asian cultures, providing a macro‐view on consumer behaviour. It explores Asian religions and philosophies, the concept of the self, others and the collective group, rules and status, and family dynamics. This review builds the foundation for a better understanding of the “Asian consumer”. Also included in this chapter is a detailed discussion of how business practices are influenced by culture‐specific issues such as the concept of “face” and the norms of reciprocity, e.g. “guanxi”.
Chapters 3 and 4 explore the individual consumer. Chapter 3 examines learning, perception and communication styles of Asian consumers. The chapter further explores the impact of perceptions and attitudes of Asians on various aspects such as product names, country of origin perceptions and brand loyalty. Chapter 4 assesses how some key consumer behaviour models are applicable to the Asian context. The authors suggest modifications to some well‐known models, including Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Fishbein’s behavioural intention model, and faddism. The chapter also addresses the fundamental differences between private use and public use consumption. In the process, the conspicuous consumption habits in some Asian countries such as Japan, Vietnam and China are described.
The remainder of the book discusses the marketing implications of the previous chapters. Chapter 5 demonstrates the application of the concepts developed in the previous chapters mostly in the form of a case study on Club Med in Japan, and the leisure industry in general. The chapter shows how Asian motivations for leisure, which are focused on learning and family‐orientation, presented significant challenges to Club Med, when it offered the prototype of a Western leisure concept in Japan. Also included in this chapter is a discussion of how cultural values, religion, government and group responsibilities impact on the leisure behaviour of Asians.
Chapter 6 presents some specific ways to segment markets in Asia. Illustrations from countries such as China and Japan provide further context for readers, and facilitate a discussion on geographic, demographic and psychographic segmentation approaches. The chapter then discusses some generic positioning strategies, using examples like Mercedes‐Benz and IKEA, which have successfully adjusted their marketing strategies to the Asian market environment. The chapter ends with a discussion of problems that may be encountered in conducting marketing research in Asia, including the “courtesy bias” and multifamily households, where it may be difficult to identify decision makers.
Chapter 7 is devoted to the need to adjust and/or develop an Asia‐specific marketing mix. The chapter discusses issues such as product standardisation vs. adaptation, packaging, regional pricing, advertising and retailing strategies. Behaviours such as bargaining and the unique role of salespeople in Asia are also discussed. The last chapter concludes that, though there is a trend towards globalisation, it will not make consumers homogeneous across cultures in the near future. The authors suggest that cultures will remain distinct and will continue to influence each and every consumer, giving rise to unique, cultural‐specific consumer behaviour.
Evaluation and conclusions
This book seems targeted at Western marketing executives and students who want to gain a broad understanding of the behavioural differences of Asian consumers. For this target group, the book provides an excellent overview to consumer behaviour in Asia. The book is interesting, easy to read and full of concrete examples. Furthermore, it is written from a Western perspective by Western authors for a Western audience. That approach is extremely useful for the Western reader, as it provides him with a familiar frame of reference for learning about the East. Of course, the same approach makes the book less interesting for someone with an Eastern perspective. The book almost throughout demonstrates how “consumer behaviour in Asia is different from that in the West” rather than dealing with the behaviours of Asians in their own right and/or dealing with differences across Asian cultures. In conclusion, the book provides an excellent introduction for Westerners to Asian consumers in general, but seems less suitable for Asians wanting to learn more about the markets surrounding them.
The authors provide an excellent exploration of how the social and cultural environment affects the attitudes and behaviour of Asian consumers in broad terms with a lot of specific examples. Especially, the efforts to adjust and modify existing consumer behaviour concepts are noteworthy, and highlight the link between culture and consumer behaviour. However, it seems that important micro aspects of consumer behaviour could have been covered more. For example, basic psychological concepts and processes, such as personality, attitude formation and change, consumer involvement and decision making, are hardly covered in this book.
Finally, though this book provides a multitude of interesting examples to support the theories and concepts covered, the majority of them are from China and Japan. The authors explicitly state that their intention is to illustrate that Asian consumer behaviour is different from that of the West, and not to present an overview of consumer behaviour across the whole of Asia. As such, countries other than Japan and China are not adequately covered, and this may disappoint readers with interest in the Indian subcontinent or South‐East Asia.
In summary, this book provides an excellent introduction to consumer behaviour in Asia, and I can definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to get started in understanding Asian consumers better.
