Alleged ‘racism’ Balenciaga and its wrathful Chinese consumers – analyzed through the case study of 2018 Balenciaga Boycott Event

Abstract

With its rapid economic growth and huge population, China has become one of the most attractive markets for luxury brands in the world. Furthermore, China’s middle-class consumers have become important targets of luxury brands. Nevertheless, such ‘brand versus consumer’ relationship cannot be easily portrayed as a linear ‘reciprocal’ trajectory, of which the contradictions and conflictions have often be presented. To further examine such relationship, one of the well-known boycott events, the 2018 Balenciaga Boycott Event, will be applied as a lens to observe how different sectors such as consumers and luxury brands interacted in a certain situation. Therefore, a complex and uneven relation between ‘foreign brand’ and ‘Chinese consumers’ will be illuminated, and the strategies applied by Balenciaga to address such challenging situational shall be presented. Consequently, this paper can be provided as a useful case study to understand the characteristics of Chinese consumers and the caused business dilemma, and further the strategies to situate the challenges.