Abstract
Since ancient times, relation-oriented Chinese people have attached great importance to the philosophy that courtesy calls for reciprocity. However, when choosing gifts, we are always caught in a dilemma: give him what I love, or what he wants. By bringing two variables—relationship type and self-construal into the model studying consumers’ gift-giving behavior, this paper aims to find out solutions to the problem above from the perspective of the consistency of brand image’s influence on the consumers’ purchase intention. The results show that: 1) the brand image congruence and the relationship type have significant reciprocal effect on purchase intention, and 2) the interaction between brand image congruence and self-construal has remarkable impact on purchasing intention.
Highlights
Since ancient times, relation-oriented Chinese people have attached great importance to the philosophy that courtesy calls for reciprocity
Focusing on consumers’ purchasing choices subject to the brand image congruence, this paper aims to analyze the effect and mechanism of action that relationship types, an external environment factor, and self-construal, an internal personality factor, have on the above problem
On the basis of enriching the existing research findings and filling the research gap, this paper aims at figuring out the influencing factors and mechanism of actions of Chinese consumers’ gift-giving behavior to help companies at home and abroad better understand Chinese market and consumers, and provide reference and enlightenment for purposefully carrying out marketing practice
Summary
Relation-oriented Chinese people have attached great importance to the philosophy that courtesy calls for reciprocity. By bringing two variables—relationship type and self-construal into the model studying consumers’ gift-giving behavior, this paper aims to find out solutions to the problem above from the perspective of the consistency of brand image’s influence on the consumers’ purchase intention. Gift-giving, existing in all developmental phase of every society, enjoys long and profound historical and cultural origins, especially in China where the philosophy “courtesy demands reciprocity” has been advocated since ancient times. Though it is a behavior costing us a large amount of time, energy and money in our daily life [1], gift-giving, as an economic affair and an implicit communication process, plays a dynamic role in interpersonal relationships. On the basis of enriching the existing research findings and filling the research gap, this paper aims at figuring out the influencing factors and mechanism of actions of Chinese consumers’ gift-giving behavior to help companies at home and abroad better understand Chinese market and consumers, and provide reference and enlightenment for purposefully carrying out marketing practice
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