Young Chinese Consumers' Perceptions toward an U.S. Apparel Brand

The mature and competitive domestic retail environment has driven U.S. retailers to seek opportunities for expansion to new emerging economies such as The People's Republic of China (China). The entrance of China into the World Trade Organization, combined with great market potential due to the large population and rapid economic growth, has made China one of the most attractive markets for U.S. companies. As young Chinese consumers are exposed to Western lifestyles, their demand for foreign apparel has increased. Although these young Chinese consumers offer favorable atmosphere to foreign apparel firms, an important question facing U.S. apparel firms is whether young Chinese consumers would be interested in buying U.S. apparel brands when China is already the world's largest apparel manufacturer and is producing many domestic brands. Another important issue is that Chinese consumers are not a homogeneous group. Although young Chinese consumers crave for fashionable and famous brands, some Chinese traditional values and beliefs such as balancing quality, price, and utility may lower their desire to buy foreign brands products (Chen, 2009). This notion suggests that differences may exist among these young consumers in psychographic characteristics relevant to apparel consumption. To this end, this study was designed to identify distinct segments among Chinese consumers identified as a potential target market to U.S. retailers (i.e., younger, well-educated, urban-living Chinese consumers) based on psychographic variables and to examine each segment's brand equity perceptions toward a U.S. apparel brand. A sample of college students (n=220) who were enrolled at two major universities in Tianjin, China, was used. The analyses involved a two-step cluster analysis based on the domain-specific psychographic factors that are relevant to young Chinese consumers' foreign apparel consumption (i.e., need for uniqueness, satisfaction with life, satisfaction with appearance, and attitudes toward American products). Each consumer segment identified from the cluster analysis was profiled with four brand equity perceptions (i.e., brand loyalty, brand association with brand awareness, perceived quality, and emotional value) using a multivariate profile analysis. This study demonstrated that domain-specific psychographic characteristics (i.e., need for uniqueness, satisfaction with life, satisfaction with appearance, and attitudes toward American products) successfully segmented potential Chinese consumers for the U.S. apparel brand. The cluster analysis generated five distinct groups of Chinese consumers: self-satisfied, American product lover, uniqueness seeker, satisfied ethnocentric and apathetic consumer segments. Furthermore, consumer perceptions toward a US brand (the Polo Ralph Lauren brand) on four brand equity dimensions differed among consumer segments. The findings supported the argument that potential target Chinese consumers for U.S. apparel brands, who are younger, well-educated, urban-living consumers, are not homogeneous, and thus cannot be targeted with identical marketing strategies. Although identifying profitable consumers who are likely to buy U.S. apparel brands among young urban consumers may be a challenge to U.S. apparel retailers, an opportunity seems to exist because a great portion of respondents (i.e., Self-satisfied consumers and American product lovers) exhibited relatively positive attitudes toward American products and positive brand perceptions toward Polo Ralph Lauren brand. Among the four dimensions of consumer-based brand equity toward Polo Ralph Lauren brand, perceived quality received the highest ratings for all five consumer segments. However, consumers provided relatively lower mean scores on brand loyalty that contained more behavioral-oriented items than the other three brand equity dimensions. The result on young Chinese consumers' relatively low brand loyalty is consistent with the arguments by Dickson, Lennon, Montalto, Shen, and Zhang (2004) that many Chinese consumers who can afford to buy prestige brands do not necessarily buy those apparel goods and that foreign apparel brands therefore may be able to secure only a very small part of the total market despite the rising average incomes of Chinese consumers. Consequently, carefully planned strategies are essential to effectively address “market within a market” targeting the young urban Chinese consumer segment (Krafft, Hesse, Höfling, Peters, & Rinas, 2007). Based on the findings, potential marketing strategies for each segment are suggested. Several limitations can be addressed from this study. The findings of the current study should be interpreted with caution due to non-random sampling method and limited number of psychographic variables used to segment consumers. Future studies could include a wide spectrum of consumers who are more representative of the entire young, well-educated, and urban-living Chinese consumer population. Other market-related variables (e.g., price-consciousness, brand-consciousness), ethnocentrism, and consumer globalization may be used as bases for segmenting the Chinese consumer market.