Search results

The rich primary and secondary data sources for studying historical Chinese marketing theory and practice are discussed. This paper aims to briefly address possible challenges (and their solutions) to using these sources.

A bibliographic review is used to analyze historical sources pertaining to Chinese marketing theory and practice.

Marketing scholars can draw from multiple but neglected and underused Chinese sources to glean important historical data reflecting pre-1949 Chinese marketing.

Underused Chinese multilateral historical marketing materials are inalienable to extending historical marketing study. Many studies about marketing theory and practice are amenable to such materials.

By scrutinizing these materials, contemporary marketers can formulate parallel strategies from the repertoire of historical marketing strategies.

This is the first comprehensive survey of an invaluable non-Western source for historical research in marketing.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical historical analysis of the business (mis)behaviors and influencing factors that discourage enduring cooperation between principals and agents, to introduce strategies that embrace the social values, economic motivation and institutional designs historically adopted to curtail dishonest acts in international business and to inform an improved principal–agent theory that reflects principal–agent reciprocity as shaped by social, political, cultural, economic, strategic and ideological forces

The critical historical research method is used to analyze Chinese compradors and the foreign companies they served in pre-1949 China.

Business practitioners can extend orthodox principal–agent theory by scrutinizing the complex interactions between local agents and foreign companies. Instead of agents pursuing their economic interests exclusively, as posited by principal–agent theory, they also may pursue principal-shared interests (as suggested by stewardship theory) because of social norms and cultural values that can affect business-related choices and the social bonds built between principals and agents.

The behaviors of compradors and foreign companies in pre-1949 China suggest international business practices for shaping social bonds between principals and agents and foreign principals’ creative efforts to enhance shared interests with local agents.

Understanding principal–agent theory’s limitations can help international management scholars and practitioners mitigate transaction partners’ dishonest acts.

A critical historical analysis of intermediary businesspeople’s (mis)behavior in pre-1949 (1840–1949) China can inform the generalizability of principal–agent theory and contemporary business strategies for minimizing agents’ dishonest acts.

This study examines how informal business networks achieve marketing goals in socially uncertain contexts. Drawing from multiple historical sources, Shangbangs, a type of business network that thrived in pre-1949 China, are analyzed.

The Critical Historical Research Method (CHRM) undergirds a study of Shangbangs’ historicity (i.e. their socio-historically embedded multiplicity, including organizational forms, activities and connotations.

As informal regional, professional, project-based, special-product-based or mixed marketing networks, Shangbangs relied on “flexible specialization” and coupled multiple business needs to market goods and services, business organizations, specific social values and, when necessary, to debrand business rivals.

This analysis extends theories about marketing networks by probing their subtypes, diverse marketing activities, multipronged channels and relationship building with social entities (including underground societies, business associations and guilds) in response to pre-1949 China’s market uncertainties. Substantiating an alternative approach to “flexible specialization” and marketing innovations within the pre-1949 Chinese economy shows how a parallel theoretical framework can complement western-based marketing theories.

This first comprehensive analysis of Shangbangs, an innovative historical Chinese marketing network outside the conventional market-corporate dichotomy, can inform theory building for marketing strategy-making and management conditioned by social contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the means for enhancing the image and business legitimacy of a socially discredited industry – pawnbroking in pre-1949 China – are explored. Previous studies suggest companies operating within such industries cannot solely rely on hard marketing strategies “to maximize sales and profits as they do with soaps and shoes” (Davidson, 2003, p. 7). Instead, they must find soft strategies for improving company and industry image and legitimacy.

This research relies on qualitative analysis of historical data and documents.

Soft strategies deployed by Chinese pawnbrokers – such as interpretations, moral value advocacies and institutionalized arrangements – contributed substantially to improving pawnbroking’s image and business legitimacy.

Interconnections among ethical values, image, business legitimacy and select marketing strategies are clarified. The efficacy of historically analyzing previously implemented business strategies and their embedding contexts is discussed.

Strategies Chinese pawnbrokers used to mitigate their previously negative image and boost their business legitimacy suggest strategies current socially disapproved companies can use to improve their image and business legitimacy.

A historical analysis of pre-1949 Chinese pawnbroking can suggest soft marketing strategies for overcoming consumers’ negative company and industry impressions.

The purpose of this study is to explore how nationalistic appeals may affect consumers’ perception and purchasing of targeted brands. Qualitative historical data from old China (1900–1949) reveal that social movement groups can adopt nationalistic appeals assisted by meaning framing – defined as a creative interpretation of symbols, designs, behaviors, social events and cultural identities to serve social and political goals – to shape consumers’ attitudes toward foreign brands. After examining the mechanisms and processes underlying consumer boycotts from 1900 to 1949, the responsive strategies of affected foreign companies are illustrated.

Critical historical research method is applied to historical data and historical “traces” from China’s corporate documents, memoirs, posters, advertisements, newspapers and secondhand sources documenting Chinese boycotts from 1900 to 1949.

Consumers may pursue interests beyond economic interests. Nationalistic appeals can mobilize consumer boycotts against foreign brands that were perceived to support or relate to targeted countries. Political framing of certain events shapes consumers’ perceptions and concomitant brand choices.

Although differences between historical and current contexts may require tailoring past marketing strategies to current conditions, past strategies can inform current and future strategies.

Strategies adopted by foreign companies in old China (1900–1949) can help contemporary companies design effective marketing strategies for a hostile marketplace infused with nationalistic appeals and competing interests.

Although local companies can adopt economic or political nationalism to realize their economic goals, it represents a double-edged sword that can harm national brands.

A historical analysis of nationalistic business appeals in pre-1949 China can inform the counterstrategies modern companies adopt to overcome consumer boycotts.

This paper aims to examine the attractiveness of the Tong Ren Tang (TRT) as a Chinese corporate heritage tourism brand and consider the significance of TRT for Chinese national identity. The study considers the saliency of Balmer’s augmented role identity notion vis-à-vis corporate heritage institutions/corporate brands. Insights are made from and for corporate heritage, heritage tourism and national identity literature.

A conceptual model comprising five hypotheses was developed and this informed a survey-based questionnaire administered to domestic tourists/customers visiting Tong Ren Tang’s flagship shop in Beijing.

The attractiveness to domestic Chinese tourists/customers of the TRT corporate heritage tourism brand was found to be attributable to its multiple role identities: national, corporate, temporal, familial and imperial. As such, this study lends credence to Balmer’s augmented role identity notion. Chinese domestic tourists/customers – as members of an ethnic Chinese community – in visiting TRT not only consume an extant corporate heritage by tangible and intangible means but can also be seen to express, and reaffirm, their sense of Chinese national identity.

For TRT’s managers, there should be an appreciation that the attractiveness of TRT as a corporate heritage tourism brand rests not only on what it sells but also in what it symbolises in national and cultural terms. This finding is applicable to the managers of many other corporate heritage/corporate heritage tourism brands.

Adopting a primordial perspective, the TRT pharmacy was found to be of singular significance to China’s national identity. Traditional Chinese Medicine, Confucian and Daoist religious/philosophical and China’s erstwhile Imperial polity are significant and enduring precepts of Chinese national identity. As such the TRT flagship shop/brand is of singular importance, as China has eviscerated much of its cultural heritage – particularly in relation to its corporate heritage brands.

This is the first empirical study to focus on corporate heritage tourism brands and one of the first studies to examine a Chinese corporate heritage/corporate heritage tourism brand. Also significant in focussing on the TRT corporate heritage brand. Established in 1669, TRT’s history spans five centuries: a corporate provenance which is exceptional within the People’s Republic of China. The study links the corporate brand notion with the nascent corporate heritage brand domain and the established area of heritage tourism.

The process of doing business in The People′s Republic of China can be understood better and improved through a conceptual model that identifies and explains critical elements of their culture. An attempt is made to fill a gap in previous work by integrating anthropological and political theory, pertinent literature, and experience in the Chinese context. The model reveals the importance of understanding how communication occurs cross‐culturally through language, material objects, and non‐verbal behaviour. The critical role of interpersonal relationships in China is discussed, highlighting the important factors of guanxi, face, group orientation, and deference to age and authority. The final element of the cultural framework is the pervasive influence of the Communist Party. A number of implications are offered for Western business practitioners.

The aim of this study is to provide an understanding of urban Chinese women’s fashion consumption practices in light of major recent socio-historical events and to demonstrate that changes in fashion are not necessarily continuous, but rather can be discontinuous in the wake of radical disturbances.

A phenomenological study was conducted that included group interviews with Chinese women belonging to three age cohorts who experienced different radical changes in recent Chinese history.

This study provides insights into how fashion develops when radical economic and social shifts result in a discontinuous rather than continuous fashion evolution. In China, it can be seen that these radical ideological shifts had discontinuous effects on notions of beauty and how identity is expressed through fashion. The changes seen in the past 60 years or so – from the advent of communism in 1949 until now – cannot be explained by theories of imitation and distinction alone. The changes are also anchored to key socio-historic events, and were not necessarily an outgrowth of the period before, or class-based practices, but rather a response to social upheavals.

This study provides a nuanced understanding of how tumultuous socio-cultural events affect how fashion is experienced in China, which allows us to contribute to the growing understanding of Chinese consumer culture, and demonstrate that the understanding of how fashion evolves needs to accommodate the upheavals in society over the past sixty years.

The purpose of this paper is to trace back the roots of US-driven “Human Resource Management” (HRM) school of thought which now become widely institutionalized in China, up to the present day.

It looks at the diffusion of management knowledge over the period to Chinese business, which involved in turn scientific management (SM), human relations (HR) and HRM, respectively, from the interwar years onwards, by using a bibliometric analysis of Chinese language sources, searching a number of databases now available.

The authors scanned the international, as well as Chinese, literature to support a conjecture of a HR route towards China and how it morphed into HRM and went on to conclude that there was by the end of the year 2015 still a significant output of academic publications with references to both HR and HRM, respectively, but that we must be cautious in asserting a firm conclusion.

This paper traces back the roots of Chinese HRM back to the US-driven HR school of thought.