Search results

China represents around 20% of the world's population, and her economy is still performing well under economic crisis. Historical events have shaped different parts of China with different economic developments and cultural encounters. The most prominent difference is between Hong Kong and the Mainland. This chapter would like to examine the development and issues of fashion retailing in China. For better understanding, this chapter starts with a brief discussion on apparel industry development and fashion culture in Hong Kong and the Mainland, follows by historical development and then presents systems of fashion retailing in both Hong Kong and the Mainland. Desktop research and exploratory research techniques were employed. Stores of international fashion luxury brands in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing were visited. Comparison of branding issues, particularly for luxury market in Hong Kong and the Mainland are discussed, so are future directions of fashion retailing in these places.

Social network analysis (SNA) may be useful in the exploration of the potential intersection between organizations, human relations (HR), public relations (PR), and corporate social responsibility (CSR) or sustainability issues. In an age of PR, social media have an important function, as reflected in the employee engagement movement. Visualization through mapping of Twitter data allows researchers to identify centers of social influence in which content travels through key accounts during sharing. Computer-mediated communication (CMC) concepts of identity, interaction, and community offer potential for future research.

There is a rising number of Asian brands expanding to Western nations. However, one of the biggest challenges is their reputation of inferior quality. The objectives of this research are to examine the U.S. consumers’ quality perception of Asian brands and what steps can be taken to improve their perceived quality to ultimately influence patronage intentions. This study also considers how age influences U.S. consumers’ perceived quality and patronage intentions.

An online experiment using 328 U.S. female subjects was conducted to examine how quality cues (brand origin and product design) influence their perceived quality of Asian brands. The study also examines how age (due to different levels of exposure of Asian brands) moderates the relationship between product cues and perceived quality.

The findings showed that there was a difference between the younger (Generation X and Y) and older (Baby boomers and Swing) group’s perceived quality of these Asian brand origins, namely Japan and China. Product design had an impact on perceived quality, but age was not a moderating factor.

Chinese and Japanese brands can use these differences in perception of brand origins to market accordingly. Product design cues can also be used effectively to both age groups by Asian brands to improve the perceived quality of U.S. consumers.

This research provides novel insight on U.S. consumers’ perceived quality and patronage intentions from different Asian brand cues. The study also contributes to the body of literature on how the relationship between specific Asian brand cues and perceived quality may differ as a function of age.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how brand communities collectively react towards brand transgressions, an area where previous research has been scant.

This study adopts a netnographic approach in studying the reactions of one particular brand community and its reactions to a marketer-initiated brand transgression.

Building on coping theory, we find evidence of brand community coping, a temporally bounded process in which the community seeks to come to terms with and even overturn the transgression. Overall, we define the brand community coping process as unfolding through three overlapping and temporally bounded stages of (1) making the problem communal, (2) exploring the problem’s meaning, and (3) co-creating responses.

Studies of consumer coping particularly in cases of brand transgressions have predominantly adopted an individualistic approach to coping, or have treated communities as coping resources for individual consumers. This study is the first study to truly look at brand communities’ collective coping endeavors. We also offer managerial implications by questioning the overtly positive tone of brand co-creation literature and underline potential threats to marketers when consumers decide to use their co-creative practices to punish the marketer.

The First Amendment affords protection to political speech on the basis of its high value. However, political speakers who make inflammatory statements on both sides of an issue do not advance political projects. An entity that purchases inflammatory social media advertising, for instance, both for and against gun control, and generates offsetting reactions simply raises the level of discursive conflict. This actor may be identified as a bad faith political speaker through relatively objective criteria. One-sided content producers, by contrast, even if they utter falsehoods and inflame discourse, cannot be so easily branded. The Gertz court, and First Amendment doctrine in general, correctly views this challenge as better handled outside of the courtroom. The novelty presented here is that evidence of two-sided content production can curtail the need for discretion and potentially close the door to many errors in judgment. Classifying two-sided inflammatory speech as low value is relatively easy to administer judicially, consistent with economic efficiency, and increases the political bargaining space by reducing discursive conflict. It also has the advantage of prohibiting egregious outside interference in an election without the need to identify the geographic origin of the disruption.