consumer lifestyle matters evidence from gray markets in china在中国从灰色市场消费者生活方式的重要证据.pdfVIP

Journal of Service Science and Management, 2012, 5, 196-205 /10.4236/jssm.2012.52024 Published Online June 2012 (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/jssm) Consumer Lifestyle Matters: Evidence from Gray Markets in China 1 2 1 Weining Liu , Lan-Yun Chang , Jing-Ru Lin 1Graduate Institute of Human Resource and Knowledge Management National Kaohsiung Normal University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan; 2Department of Creative Product Design, Far East University, Tainan, Taiwan. Email: t3353@.tw, kookiness2399@ Received March 9th, 2012; revised April 10th, 2012; accepted April 20th, 2012 ABSTRACT Consumers are at the central point of marketing. However, while existential research is devoted to understanding gray market, little attention is given to the consumer’s view of gray market. This study attempts to take the perspective of consumers to address the gray market issue. Lifestyles of the target customers of trademark holders are proposed for trademark holders to retain existing customers while simultaneously attracting new customers from the gray market. We perform Cluster analysis to identify different customer groups by using “lifestyle” as a market segmentation variable. ANOVA, Scheffe test and regression analyses are then employed to test the proposed hypotheses. Analytical results reveal that the different customer groups exhibit particular lifestyle features, different perceptions of gray product qual- ity as well as different purchase intentions. Keywords: Consumer Lifestyle; Product Quality Perception; Purchase Intention; Gray Market; Trademark Holders 1. Introduction making enough to buy the consumer goods like digital cameras. It’s no coincidence that Chinese are bringing Gray market products are genuine branded goods sold at