Operationalising the luxury construct and modelling the influence of Confucian cultural values on the perception, attitude and buying behaviour of East Asian consumers

Abstract

East Asia has recently become the biggest and fastest growing market for Western branded luxury goods. However, this is still an under-researched market, which is very different to the West due to the profound influence of Confucian cultural values. The research focuses on two main research issues, (1) operationalising the luxury construct in East Asian context and (2) modelling the influence of the Confucian cultural values on the perception, attitude and buying behaviour of East Asian luxury goods consumers. The study has combined quantitative and qualitative research methods to increase the overall reliability and validity of this research. After an intensive review of extant literature, the pre-study stage of the research included online expert panel judgement, East Asian family focus groups and East Asian scholar interviews to develop an original instrument for the main data collection stage. The main research data was collected from a large-scale survey on actual shoppers in a range of medium to high-end shopping malls in 4 representative East Asian cities, namely Beijing, Singapore, Tokyo and Hanoi. The research demonstrated that the Confucian values do have a very significant impact on luxury goods consumer behaviour. The majority of the pre-developed hypotheses of the research were supported by the empirical data from the survey. However, there were a few unexpected and very interesting findings. For instance, the Quality dimension of the luxury construct in East Asian context reflects the public meaning of luxury goods, rather than private meaning as in the literature. Therefore this dimension turns out to be important in the perception of East Asian consumers, and it has a direct link to the favourable attitude towards luxury goods. Another surprise was that East Asians' positive attitude towards luxury goods will generally lead directly to buying propensity, the moderating impact of income being very little in this relationship. The study has also helped understand some complex cultural values, for example Humility, in a new consumption context. The findings were helpful to provide insights into the East Asian luxury goods market and consumer behaviour, as well as practical managerial implications for Western luxury brands. While every firm is unique and each market context is different, these guidelines of actions can be used as important reference to develop a marketing strategy for a luxury brand in the East Asian luxury goods market