The Chinese Consumer Connection researchers are very active throughout Greater China. Here are some of our team's acheivements.

Clyde & two coauthors have been awarded the best overall research paper for the past five years in Taiwan. The award was for their paper (in Chinese) on the use of metaphors in understanding the retail emphasis of renao (熱鬧) in Taiwan, friendship in USA, and service in Japan. The award included half a million NTD, sponsored by United Microelectronics Corporation through the Chinese Management Association.

Clyde presented at Proctor & Gamble's Demo Day meeting in Beijing. The day's internal training focused on sharing knowledge across functions for developing the consumer experience. Managers were very interested in the insight of Clyde's Chinese consumer value models, especially in relation to promotional activity.

Clyde & Judy have published in the SSCI ranked Journal of Business Ethics. The paper (Chinese Negotiators’ Subjective Variations in Intercultural Negotiations) reports on an experiment measuring the subjective biases of Chinese negotiators toward others from Japan and America. Power distance and gender variables are also covered. Read the paper.

James spoke at the 2009 Annual Innovation Summit, in Shanghai, hosted by Innoenterprise and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The summit brought together researchers and managers from leading businesses in China. James introduced localized service research centering on unique Chinese consumer attitudes toward service and preference for service providers in developing a warm relationship. Watch the video.

Clyde spoke at the 2009 Annual Innovation Summit, in Shanghai, hosted by Innoenterprise and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The summit brought together researchers and managers from leading businesses in China. Clyde introduced innovative ethnographic research to model Chinese consumer behavior. Watch the video.

Clyde has published a research paper in the Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, Vol. 21(2), 2009. The paper, titled When hot and noisy is good, shows the importance of renao in Chinese consumer behavior. Download the paper here, and remember CCC has a research section with more papers, reports, data, video, and audio. Just register to see the Research menu.

Judy and Clyde, along with their coauthor Andrea Lee, have been awarded best paper of the conference in San Fransisco, USA. The conference ACME (Association for Chinese Management Educators) centered on Chinese values in current business research. The winning paper, Subjective Intercultural Variations Among Chinese Negotiators, fit that bill perfectly.

James has published a research paper in the Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, Vol. 21(2), 2009. The paper, titled Developers and terminators in hypermarkets' relationships with Chinese customers, examines aspects of service specific to Chinese cultural settings that lead to satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Download the paper here, and remember CCC has a research section with more papers, reports, data, video, and audio. Just register to see the Research menu.

In March, 2009, James & Clyde were invited to present at an educational conference in Taiwan covering instructional technologies. The Overseas Chinese Institute of Technology's AFL department organized the event. James covered the use of the online business writing software, QBL Online, and Clyde presented his own published research results showing how to effectively use the system (appeared in the SSCI ranked journal Language Learning).

Members of the CCC team hosted a session at the prestigious INFORMS conference in Washington, DC. Clyde led the session on Issues in Chinese Consumer Behavior, including
James: Hypermarket Service Quality with a Chinese Flavour
Stephen: Chinese Relationship Marketing: Wet Markets in Taiwan
Clyde: Chinese Cultural Influences on Retail Channel Selection
Michael Turton: Cultural Change Through Wine Marketing in Taiwan.

The CCC team caught up with A. Parasuraman, well known for his groundbreaking research on service quality. We sat down with him and discussed the enduring appeal of the Professor's work on service quality, the SERVQUAL model, views on internationalization of service and a future increasingly focused on technology based services. He even gave us some good advice on research publishing! Watch the video here.

Clyde gave the keynote speech at Transworld Institute of Technology's AFL conference, in Taiwan. A bit controversial, Clyde asserts Western-based language learning theories are culturally biased and that a marketing theory approach may be more accurate in capturing what consumers actually expect from such efforts. Listen to the talk and see the slides here.

James presented recent research on the influence of Chinese culture on different hypermarket formats in Taiwan at a marketing conference in Shanghai (SJTU). Stores that adopt local values are more successful than those that do not.  Sounds simple, right? Well, not when managers associate their own values with modernity and Chinese values with being backward, or worse.

At a conference in Shanghai, Prof. Kim Fam agreed to have his MAG (Marketing in Asia Group) and CCC cooperate. We agreed to work together in research, grant applications and publications between members of the two marketing research organizations to advance the idea that marketing in Asia is dissimilar to that in USA or Europe.

March, 2008. Clyde was invited to Hong Kong City University, marketing department, to talk about his research on Chinese marketing relationship metaphors. Director Zhou has a strong research history in combining traditional Chinese thought with modern marketing theory. Clyde's work first caught Prof. Zhou's eye in an INFORMS conference in Singapore. With the growth of China, this localized work is of increasing importance for Western firms if they want to compete.

January, 2008. Stephen & Clyde have won one of the highest local research awards, from the Chinese Management Association, ROC, for their research and paper on cultural metaphors used in local retailing settings: USA, Japan, and Taiwan.

A. Parasuraman, Ph.D.

A. Parasuraman is a Professor and Holder of the James W. McLamore Chair in Marketing at the University of Miami. He has published over 100 scholarly articles and research monographs. He has received many awards for his teaching, research and professional contributions, including the AMA SERVSIG’s “Career Contributions to the Services Discipline Award” (1998) and the Academy of Marketing Science’s “Outstanding Marketing Educator Award” (2001). In 2004 he was named a “Distinguished Fellow” of the Academy of Marketing Science. He served as editor of the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (1997-2000) and became editor of the Journal of Service Research on June 1, 2005 for a 3-year term. He serves on ten editorial review boards. He is the recipient of the “JAMS Outstanding Reviewer Award” for 2000-2003 and 2003-2006, and the “2003 Journal of Retailing Outstanding Reviewer Award.” He is the lead author of Marketing Research (2nd Edition), a college textbook published in 2006, and is a co-author of three other business books written for practitioners: Delivering Quality Service: Balancing Customer Perceptions and Expectations, Marketing Services: Competing Through Quality, and Techno-Ready Marketing: How and Why Your Customers Adopt Technology. He has conducted dozens of executive seminars on service quality, customer satisfaction and the role of technology in service delivery in many countries.

Zhou Nan, Ph.D.

Born in China and living through the early Cultural Revolution, Prof. Zhou went on to attend university in the USA, eventually earning a Ph.D. from University of Utah. Teaching in the USA and Canada for a number of years, Joe visited Hong Kong and ended up moving there to teach at City University of Hong Kong. Currently, he is the acting head of the department. Over the years, Prof. Zhou has published in the top marketing journals. His research includes an emphasis on local Chinese consumer issues and a deep understanding of how Chinese concepts integrate into modern retailing and consumer psychology.

Jane Lu, Ph.D.

Jane's background is in economics, spending most of her time now researching such issues as consumer responses to a possible Avian Flu outbreak. Professor Lu is an expert in local retailing and is a great resources we often turn to. She has done numerous studies on local retailing as well as the retailing scene in Shanghai.

Nickola Pazderic, Ph.D.

Dr. Pazderic has lived in Taiwan for nearly two decades. During that time, he performed anthropological research that was published in Social Sciences and Humanities journals, including the top ranked Journal of Cultural Anthropology. Currently, he is teaching at the University of Washington and raising his daughter, along with his wife in Seattle. Nick has been looking at English as a commodity within the larger trend of university education being treated like a consumable good.

Robert Reynolds, Ph.D.

Robert is an expert in Chinese linguistics, with a Ph.D. in the topic. Robert has experience in living in Taiwan from the early 1980s and more recently as the director of a university department.
Robert's Moodle Web site, personal Web site, university Web site.

Michael Turton

Michael's wide experience in Taiwan dates back to the late 1980s. Consulting, teaching, research, editing, and political studies are just a some of the things Michael has worked on over the years. He built the most complete online resource about teaching English in Taiwan at  Teaching English in Taiwan. After that, Michael moved into blogging and is currently the best known English blogger in Taiwan. Rather than just a report of daily experiences, The View from Taiwan is a serious voice for Taiwan democracy--so often overlooked as the Western press trip over themselves chasing favor in the PRC.

Links to Chinese Marketing Research Topics

Marketing in Asia Group

Focusing on the relationship between Asian culture and marketing issues and practices in Asia, this site is run by Professor Kim Fam out of the University of Otago in New Zealand. The goal is to get more quality researchers to join together and raise the visibility of localized Asian marketing research. A goal shared by Chinese Consumer Connection.

ChinaLyst
A collection of China related blogs and sites.

We welcome link exchanges.  We want to link to sites that provide information or services of interest to our visitors. That would be things related to consumer behavior and marketing research, especially in the context of Chinese culture. If you would like to exchange links with us, then please send an email to cwarden[AT]cwarden.org  Send us the URL of the page where the link to us will be added, and we will visit your site to determine whether it would be of interest to our visitors.

Production is all done in house by Clyde, with a trusty quad core PC and many WD TB HDs, dual GeForce cards, Fedora Linux and Window servers, lots of bandwidth, Sony Vegas & Acid, Adobe AfterEffects, Premiere Pro & Fireworks. If you do not understand any of that, then you are not a geek (congratulations, you have a real life).

The Webcast recording setup includes a lot of equipment I already had on hand for my video production, but a few new things as well. The recording is done with Sony Acid, which I have been using since it was Sonic Foundry's in the late 90s (along with their VideoFactory, later to become Sony Vegas). A Creative analog to digital converter lets me get multiple tracks into the recording for better mixing. The unit is called Sound Blaster Digital Music SX and seems to mainly be sold in Asia--I got it off the local Yahoo auction site, which has become a huge electronics storefront for small specialty shops. Skype audio and my own voice are pre-mixed with a Behringer Mixer before going to the digital converter. My mic is a MXL 990 Condenser Microphone, which gives a nice warm sound for a great price. I run Skype on one machine and mix everthing down and then record on a Thinkpad.

Most of the on location video is shot on a Sony VX-1000, a classic camera that stays around forever. I was able to get my camera used on Yahoo Taiwan auction for a great price. The camera was from Japan, so the menus are all in Japanese, which is kind of cool.

Studio shoots are done wth the Sony DCR-VX 2100, a couple generations later and a great camera.

Location shoots include this Sony HVR-MRC1K which records video directly to CF memory. This unit captures the HDV1080i, DVCAM, or DV stream via i.LINK output. We can simultaneously record to tape, which ends our issues with tape screw ups. The best part of this is a 32GB CF card gets double the recording time of a tape, and results go directly to disk (no more capturing). Sony did a good job on this device. The design is solid, breaks down into smaller parts real easy, and it takes the standard video camera batteries--making it all interchangeable.

Feild recordings are done with the Zoom H4, which allows multi-track recording, for better post-production work. 

Everything is hosted on my servers at my NCHU office.  The podcast site is a Joomla CMS hosted on a Fedora Linux machine (the top left one in the photo). Dual cores on the Windows box and one of the Linux machines, the department server, I manage, up on the top right, and everything is on Giga speed ethernet.

Our video studio. We run Adobe's OnLocation with direct to disk recording, and normally a B-roll camera recording to tape. Everything is run on a tight budget, with lots of homemade kit--PVC pipes are GREAT.

Location shoots. We often go out on location in Singapore, China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.