Consumers’ Need for Uniqueness and Customization Behavior Among Chinese Consumers

Abstract

Consumer research shows that personality characteristics are useful for identifying core market segments (Engel, Blackwell, and Miniard 1995). One of the personality traits that have received much attention is consumers' need for uniqueness (Lynn and Harris 1997; Snyder and Fromkin 1977, 1980; Tian, Bearden, and Hunter 2001). Consumers' need for uniqueness (CNFU) is defined as “the trait of pursuing differentness relative to others through the acquisition, utilization, and disposition of consumer goods for the purpose of developing and enhancing one's personal and social identity” (Tian, Bearden, and Hunter 2001). Evidence from research suggests that the form of the need for uniqueness may vary according to the extent to which a given culture is individualistic or collectivistic. It is argued that while in the Western cultural systems individuals who score high on a need for uniqueness scale seek to apply different choice strategies because of consumer's desire for counter conformity, such a desire does not fit with the cultural norms of many Asian countries (Herrmann and Heitmann 2006). Further, it is noted in the literature that the characteristics of customers' preferences are the antecedents to and main drivers of the response to marketers' offers including individually customized offers (Simonson 2005). Customization plays an important role in changing the competitive situation (e.g. putting downward pressure on a competitor's prices) (Syam, Ruan and Hess 2005) and will be expected in most of the markets in the future (Simonson 2005). The literature has called for further research on the factors that influence customers' acceptance of or tendency to act on customized offers to fit individual preferences (Simonson 2005). Despite the current trend in customization of consumer goods to the individual's own requirements (Fiore, Lee, and Kunz 2004), the possible relationship between CNFU and customization behavior remain untested. In this respect, there is little empirical evidence or insight into how consumers in a collectivist society such as China embrace the notion of uniqueness and their ability to express counter-conformity in preferences of customization without high social cost given the fact that the collectivist culture of China highly values social approval. Thus, the present paper addresses two issues: how Chinese consumers demonstrate the psychometric characteristics of need for uniqueness, and how this is related to the tendency towards customized product features. In the present study the construct of CNFU was based on Tian et al.'s (2001) three-dimensional theorization and operationalized by their CNFU scale. The CNFU scale was tested and its relationship with consumers' customization behavior was explored based on the data collected from a convenience sample of 352 university students in Southern China.