Analyzing the impact of Confucianism on customer behaviour and Essay

Analyzing the impact of Confucianism on customer behaviour and perception of western brands - Essay Example 150). There were attempts to eliminate Confucian thinking in China during the periods of Cultural Revolution, but these attempts were not successful. Confucian thinking and doctrines have profoundly impacted today’s China to have had resurgence and to become very important part of Chinese persona. Chinese culture has been influenced by the Confucian thinking about leading a virtuous life. Confucian thoughts are basically built on three principles; 1) humaneness and loving an individual’s personality, 2) morality and uprightness, and 3) rites and ritual propriety. These three principles are complemented by the five pairs of social roles that are recognized as the basic cultural relationship between individuals. These relations are; between father and son, between the ruler and the subject, between the older and young, between spouses and between friends (Gallo, 2011, p. 43). Confucianism perceived family as the centre of all relationships and the family has been viewed a s the basic unit. In contrast to the Western business culture that is either fact-based or transaction-based, Chinese business culture is based on valued relationship and personal networks. Guanxi- the Chinese term used by Confucianism literature to denote relationship- gave greater emphasis on friendly relation between two persons based on favour-exchange, and therefore, literatures stressed that the exchange of favour is at the heart Guanxi. (Morschett, Schramm-Klein and Zentes, 2010, p. 150). Confucianism’s principles of interpersonal relationship and other doctrines are perceived to impact the consumer behaviour of Chinese people and their attitude towards western brands too. Impact of... As China has become an attractive and emerging marketplace and that it consist major portion of world’s total population, the Chinese consumer and his behaviour have been major focuses in the literature of international consumer behaviour. Culture is regarded as a significant determinant of consumer behaviour and cultural values are found to play vital roles in influencing consumers in their buying behaviour. China is a rapidly emerging market and global brands are studying about the potentiality of Chinese market in terms of investment, consumption, employment, and attitude and buying behaviour. Chinese culture is mainly influenced by Confucianism. This piece of research paper has analyzed the impact of Confucianism on the buying behaviour and perception about foreign brands. Various literatures stressed that Confucianism has profoundly impacted the buying behaviour because Confucianism emphasized harmonious relationship between different people and this caused people to show different attitudes toward different products. This paper concluded that Chinese people are quite thrifty and are found to show prestige since men have to strongly impress wives to maintain better relationship.