The Changing Value and Attitude of Taiwan Consumers Under the Increasing Domination of Foreign Retailers: A Longitudinal Study
Ting-Jui Chou Department of Marketing and Distribution Management National Kaohsiung First University of Science and Technology
Abstract
With more than 22 billion in population and over 14 thousand US dollars Per Capita GDP, the tiny island of Taiwan has great potential to be a paradise of domestic retailing. Local retailers had been enjoying the benefits obtained from two-digit GNP annual growth rates for more than ten years. Some of today's tycoons with old-fashioned salesmanship were thriving on the road to make their very first fortune. However, as the islanders were deficient in the knowledge and techniques for successful retailing, there were few local retailers that stood out to be successful retailing examples. Especially after the introduction of 7-11 in the late 70's and following the invasion of many world big names such as McDonald's, Family Mart, and SOGO after the mid 80's, the local retailers in Taiwan faded. During recent decades, eventually, foreign players have largely dominated the domestic market of Taiwan retailing. Among them, in concerning their country-of-origin, Japan, USA, and Hong Kong take the lead.
On one hand, such domination of foreign retailers has, indeed, helped to capitalize and deepen the knowledge base of Taiwan retail industry. On the other, with a tendency of being ignored easily, these foreign culture deliverers also demonstrate a great capability of changing, if not overthrowing, the consumption value of a society. As qualitative observations have suggested, Taiwan has exhibited a strong flavor of culture mixture during the current decade. Foreign retailers tend to bring in new types of operations that represent successful business model of their home countries. To some extent, most of these new types of retail operation proved to be successful even in this different cultural setting. Especially the youngsters, who are represented as part of the retail shoppers, tend to swallow every detail of their fascinating culture. As a result, some places in Taipei mimic Shibuya of Tokyo, with stores decorated in exotic assortments and pavonine young girls hanging around on the streets.
However, with such a multicolored peregrine appearance in modern Taiwan retailing, has the consumption value of this society ever changed? Is the current visage of a society more likely associated with its traditional inheritance or, on the other hand, the intrusion of foreign cultures? As the history of any civilization never plays back, it is difficult to understand how the consumption value of a society can change over time. However, for each period of time in history, consumption behavior of retail shoppers are recorded with a variety of carriers. It is possible to appreciate the context of consumption life of earlier society through qualitative examination such as content analysis or meta-analysis. With this, it would be interesting to know the difference of consumption value and attitude between the prior- and the post-foreign-domination era of Taiwan retailing history.
This piece of work intends to portray changing values and attitudes of Taiwanese consumers under the increasing domination of foreign retailers. For this purpose, this study is separated into two distinct parts. First, the consumption behavior of Taiwanese consumers prior to mid 80Õs is reviewed based on secondary data. With the method of integrating review of literature, a fuller picture of Taiwan social life is presented, to illustrate the interaction between consumers and retailers. Second, based on a longitudinal data set (1997-2001) of Taiwanese consumers, quantitative analyses are implemented to identify buying behaviors across consumers with different value schemes. This data set was accumulated through a series of eight consumer surveys conducted by the author in the last ten years. For each survey the sample size ranged from several hundreds to several thousands, with variables and constructs of measurement overlapped purposely for cross-year comparison. Therefore, the changing values and attitudes of Taiwanese consumers over the recent years can be better observed. As a result, this study is able to differentiate the consumption value and attitude of Taiwanese consumers between the prior- and the post-foreign-domination era of Taiwan retailing history. Discussions and conclusions of findings are presented.
