The Role of Face in Chinese and East Asian Cultures - Implications for Applying Context to Marketing Research

The Role of Face in Chinese and East Asian Cultures

  This paper describes the important social construct of face (mianzi) in Chinese society and its impact on marketing. Most academic studies of face in marketing and management have produced ambiguous and unanticipated results, indicating that the role of face in marketing is still not understood well. Within the last few years, several innovative studies have introduced dimensions of context that have advanced theory about how face plays a role in relationship marketing and consumer behavior. Future marketing studies that involve face should address the following issues of context: the impacts of face practices on achieving marketing objectives, the ethical dimension of face, the nature of relationships involved, and the timing of face practices. Additional considerations about research design should be made about whether to use emic or etic research designs and analyzing intra cultural variation.