Analyzing the impact of Confucianism on customer behaviour and perception of western brands - Essay Example

? MARKETING Analyzing the impact of Confucianism on behaviour and perception of western brands ………………………….. College ……………………………… Date of submission ……………….. Words count: 1645 Introduction As China has become an attractive and emerging marketplace and that it consist major portion of world’s total population, the Chinese consumer and his behaviour have been major focuses in the literature of international consumer behaviour. Culture is regarded as a significant determinant of consumer behaviour and cultural values are found to play vital roles in influencing consumers in their buying behaviour (Koubaa, Ulvoas and Chew, 2011, p. 627). Chinese cultural values are major factors that determine and influence Chinese business as well as organisational and leadership practices (Wah, 2010, p. 280). Out of different ideologies that impacted Chinese thinking and social life, Confucianism accounts for the most influence. Even after 2500 years of the time Confucius, his traditional ethics and values continue to show tremendous impact on Chinese life. This piece of paper critically examines the impact of Confucianism on customer behaviour and perception of western brands based on relevant literature in the field. Confucianism Confucianism was founded by K’ung-Fu-tzu, more generally known as Confucius in the fifth century of BC, and this has been the official ethical system of China for more than 2000 years until the 1949 Communist reforms. It is accounted that more than 150 million people today follow Confucius ethics in China, Korea and Japan (Hoobler and Hoobler, 2009, p. 10). Confucius stressed humanity and life and his doctrines had stronger implications to the Chinese educational system. Mungenast (2007, p. 12) argued that Confucianism didn’t cover certain aspects traditional religions and therefore it cannot be considered as a religion. It is a philosophy with rituals that is related to a person’s life such as personal relation, marriage, death etc. Confucius suggested proper aspects and ways for human’s behaviour and also right ways for the whole society to be organized. Confucius taught learning through family-centric institutions that are based on certain principles like self-sacrifice, meticulousness and gratifications (Morschett, Schramm-Klein and Zentes, 2010, p. 150). There were attempts to eliminate Confucian thinking in China during the periods of Cultural Revolution, but these attempts were not successful. Confucian thinking and doctrines have profoundly impacted today’s China to have had resurgence and to become very important part of Chinese persona. Chinese culture has been influenced by the Confucian thinking about leading a virtuous life. Confucian thoughts are basically built on three principles; 1) humaneness and loving an individual’s personality, 2) morality and uprightness, and 3) rites and ritual propriety. These three principles are complemented by the five pairs of social roles that are recognized as the basic cultural relationship between individuals. These relations are; between father and son, between the ruler and the subject, between the older and young, between spouses and between friends (Gallo, 2011, p. 43). Confucianism perceived family as the centre of all relationships and the family has been viewed as the basic unit. In contrast to the Western business culture that is either fact-based or transaction-based, Chinese business culture is based on valued relationship and personal networks. Guanxi- the Chinese term used by Confucianism literature to denote relationship- gave greater emphasis on friendly relation between two persons based on favour-exchange, and therefore, literatures stressed that the exchange of favour is at the heart Guanxi. (Morschett, Schramm-Klein and Zentes, 2010, p. 150). Confucianism’s principles of interpersonal relationship and other doctrines are perceived to impact the consumer behaviour of Chinese people and their attitude towards western brands too. Impact of Confucianism on customer behaviour Culture is always an important determinant of consumer behaviour. Certain important components of culture are found to influence consumer’s perception, behaviour, attitude and understanding about a given product or services and the brand communication. This is perhaps the main reason why culture significantly affects consumers’ behaviour in buying process. Basic elements such as religion, caste, education, history and language etc are found to form and structure out a culture and these are found to send direct as well as indirect messages to consumers to affect his behaviour for buying process (Doole and Lowe, p. 80). How cultural values, individual attitudes and willingness to buy are linked each other or how they influence one another is an important matter of debate in the literature. Based on the studies of Williams in 1979, Neuman in 1986 and Homer and Kahle in 1988, Koubaa et al (2011, p. 627) supported the argument that cultural values are significant factor to affect consumers’ attitude and willingness to buy goods or services. They hypothesized that consumers’ cultural values play pivotal roles in impacting their attitude and willingness to buy certain product r services. When it comes to China, various studies concluded that Chinese values and cultural norms impact consumers’ behaviour for consumption and other needs such as searching for information, learning and memorizing processes, country of origin perception, loyalty towards products and purchase frequency (Koubaa et al, 2011, p. 627). Luo (2009, p. 27) found that Confucius’s principles for self-guidance has impacted consumers’ perception about goods and services in the market. Confucius wrote that the basic element in establishing a kind of harmonious life between people is the way how they treat others. Confucianism emphasized that a person never becomes noble by birth, but by developing five humanitarian virtues; they are- 1) benevolence, 2) righteousness, 3) proper conduct, 4 trustworthiness, and 5) wisdom,. These basic teachings of Confucianism have been found to largely impact Chinese people’s buying behaviour and perception about foreign brands. Being deeply impacted by the dogmas of Confucianism, Chinese cultural values give greater emphasis on living in harmony with nature, along with respect of right order, modesty in life, long-term orientation for future perspectives and interdependence self view. These values and rites are found to impact Chinese consumers to tend to be quite thrift as they are most likely to save higher percentage of their earnings as compared to that of consumers in western and other countries. They are very likely to save around 40 percent of their income due to Confucius’s teachings mentioned above (Li, Jiang and An, 2009, p. 100). Confucianism emphasized interdependence self-view. This is the basic reason why Chinese consumers tend to express pride and status in certain goods or services they choose in order to impress others and maintain better relation with others. This is perhaps main reason why Chinese people are attracted to buying luxury items and to make conspicuous consumption. Though Chinese people are deeply influenced by Confucianism and therefore they seem to be thrifty, it is also obvious that Chinese people still tend to value modern brands and prefer certain global brands like Nike and Coke to their home- brands (Li et al 2009, p. 100). However, this positive attitude towards certain global brands may be due to the Confucius’s doctrine of ‘mianzi’, because ‘Mianzi’ is closely linked to certain values like self-esteem, vanity etc and hence these are similar to the western concept of prestige (Morschett, et al, 2010, p. 150). Chinese people, due to the influence of Confucianism, have a stronger interest in beautifying and maintaining their face as it is considered as a major strategic way to gain intrinsic satisfaction and this may be the reason why Chinese often tend to choose global brands like Nike and Coke. Confucianism specified certain roles differently for men and women. Women are expected to stay at home and men are responsible for achieving success in career and obtaining social status. Men are, therefore, very likely to have stronger needs to impress others and thus to maintain relationship instructed Confucius. Since Chinese men are expected to achieve status in life, financial stability and power to maintain better relationship, they have the concern of prestige. Li et al (2009, p. 101) argued that the power-prestige affects Chinese men to show positive attitude towards compulsive buying whereas Chinese ladies may not show the same. Koubaa et al (2011, p. 630) examined Chinese women’s attitude variance to skin-fairness products and skin-smoothness products in order to analyze and observe how they are influenced by Confucianism. A survey conducted among Chinese women to compare their attitude variance between face fairness and face smoothness products shoed that women are likely to show a sense of self-accomplishment by using face fairness products. Women’s aspirations for face fairness products were found that it was because of maintaining better relationship others and mainly with husbands as suggested by Confucianism. The survey revealed that Chinese women showed significant positive attitude towards buying skin beatifying products and thus impacted their buying decision due to the influence of importance of building harmonious relationship established by Confucianism. Confucianism, since it has been the major culture of Chinese people for more than 2000 years, has impacted almost all the aspects of social, economic and cultural settings of Chinese people. It has profoundly impacted the business and marketing factors. Bell’s (2008, p. 92) study gives the extreme aspect of this influence. He argued that Chinese people are found to be highly proficient in imitating and copying designs, technology, trademarks and other major contributions of western or other companies. Bell (2008) argued that this imitation is due to the deeply held cultural impact of Confucianism because Confucius taught that when three people are together, there must be one from whom another one can learn from (p. 92). Conclusion China is a rapidly emerging market and global brands are studying about the potentiality of Chinese market in terms of investment, consumption, employment, and attitude and buying behaviour. Chinese culture is mainly influenced by Confucianism. This piece of research paper has analyzed the impact of Confucianism on the buying behaviour and perception about foreign brands. Various literatures stressed that Confucianism has profoundly impacted the buying behaviour because Confucianism emphasized harmonious relationship between different people and this caused people to show different attitudes toward different products. This paper concluded that Chinese people are quite thrifty and are found to show prestige since men have to strongly impress wives to maintain better relationship. 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