THE IMPACT OF CULTURAL CRINGE ON CONSUMER BEHAVIOR THE IMPACT OF CULTURAL CRINGE ON CONSUMER BEHAVIOR IN CHINA IN CHINA

China’s market with huge demand and limited supply has become attractive to many international companies since 1976. This study examines the impact of cultural cringe on consumer behavior in China by using Nike, an American sports brand, and Li-Ning, a Chinese sports brand as examples. An online questionnaire survey with 36 questions is conducted in a comprehensive college in the People’s Republic of China. Participants are 314 students from different majors. Results show that the increase of cultural cringe leads to the increasing likelihood of buying Nike’s products. Limitations of the study and the direction for future research are also discussed.

Moreover, discourses that depict the transformation of China's citizenry from comrades to consumers advance the view that emulative motives render Western brands desirable to Chinese consumers (Croll, 2006;Garner, 2005;Wang, 2000).
From the Chinese economic reform in 1978 more and more international companies go to China and some of them have become the leading companies in different industries, including, e.g., Ford, KFC, Nike, Starbucks, and H&M. These leading companies have made great benefits from Chinese market and kept increasing the marketing share as well. The reason behind the success of these companies is not just the products they sell, but also has something to do with cultural factors in China. In other words, the cultural factors of brands are associated with the change of consumer behavior. However, few studies have been done from this perspective. The purpose of this study is to explore this line of research by investigating the relationship between cultural cringe and consumer behavior in China.

Cultural Cringe
Cultural cringe refers to an internalized inferiority complex which causes people in a country to dismiss their own culture as inferior to other cultures (Phillips, 2006). The term "cultural cringe" was coined in Australia after the Second World War by the Melbourne critic and social commentator Arthur Phillips. Phillips (2006) pointed out the public widely assumed that anything produced by local dramatists, actors, musicians, artists and writers was necessarily deficient when compared against the works of their British and European counterparts. As Xu (2010) indicated, cultural cringe is expressed in two ways. First, people show negative feeling about their own culture, including disappointment, inferiority, and ignorance. Second people show appreciation for other cultures, including favorable impression, enjoyment, and satisfaction.
Moreover, according to some Western scholars (e.g., Ashcroft, Griffiths, & Tiffin, 1989;Bhabha, 1994), cultural cringe is also tightly connected with "cultural alienation", which refers to the process of devaluing or abandoning one's own culture or cultural background. A person who is culturally alienated places little value on their cultures and instead hungers for that of a colonizing nation background. Recent scholars like Kashima, Beatson, Kaufmann, Branchflower, and Marques (2014) also pointed out that in the case of Australian people; the cultural script of cringe prescribes them to evaluate their country modestly and to reject high praise of their country. This demonstrates the existent of cultural cringe.
In terms of devaluing one's own culture, Chinese people also have a similar history. From the end of 1900s to 1920s most of the Chinese had the feeling of inferiority about their own culture and doubted or even denied their own traditional culture, which reflects the symptom of cultural cringe (Du, 2011 Although China's economy grows rapidly in the last two decades, the gap between China and the West still largely exists. For example, many Chinese companies continue to take advantage of cultural cringe by copying the design from Western countries in clothing, architectures, mobiles, restaurants, and even TV programs to satisfy the inner desire of higher social status of consumers (Long, 2010). Chinese seeking to advancing their social standing by imitating the consumption practices of Westerners to the extent their incomes allow can be explained, according to Garner (2005) andWang (2000), by Veblen's (1925) theory of conspicuous consumption. Veblen's theory stipulates that conspicuous leisure gives way to "conspicuous consumption", but both are performed for the sole purpose of making an invidious distinction based on pecuniary strength, which demonstrates that wealth is the basis for social status. Another similar example is that to Chinese consumers Western products represent social status, and Western brands continue to attract Chinese consumers even if the prices are high (Forney & Jin, 2004 (Li, 2010).
The cultural cringe of Chinese people could be found in many aspects in their lives. Liu (2009)  Meanwhile, the cultural cringe of Chinese people could be found in foods as well.
For example, Beijing Snack Association gave some Beijing traditional snacks English names, such as Chinese Coke, Chinese Pizza, and Chinese hamburgers. Many of them already lost the original meanings of the snacks in order to make them "international" and be accepted by Western visitors (Fan, 2008). Moreover, Chinese people called their traditional Lovers' Day, i.e., Qi Xi Festival, as Chinese Valentine's Day (Fan, 2008).
Additionally, cultural cringe also can be detected in Chinese arts. Peking Opera as one of the most famous operas in China is considered the quintessence of Chinese culture. Recently, some artists performed Peking Opera by wearing bikinis. Some people believed that this combination of different cultural components in the performance would ruin traditional Peking opera; it also is a reflection of Chinese artists' inferiority on their traditional culture (Culture Cringe, 2012). Although people started to realize the impact of cultural cringe in their lives in China, Liu and Wang (2007) found that Chinese consumers continue to show preference of the Western style.
However, there are challenging ideas which disagree with the points described above. Some scholars pointed out that there are steadfast or resurgent nationalistic motives render Western brands undesirable to Chinese consumers (e.g., Wang & Wang, 2007). It is believed that Chinese consumers prefer local products compared to Western products based on their patriotism and pride of Chinese culture. Nevertheless, instead of looking at the impacts of cultural cringe on consumer behavior in China, these groups of scholars more focused on the reflection of cultural cringe in China and Chinese consumers' inner patriotism. Hence, it is important to examine the possible impact of cultural cringe on consumer behavior in China.

Consumer Behavior
Homburg, Kuester, and Krohmer (2013) pointed out that consumer behavior refers to the processes individuals, groups, or organizations use to select, secure, and dispose of products, services, experiences, or ideas to satisfy needs and the impacts of these processes on the consumer and society. One of the models of consumer behavior, i.e., the black box model, developed by Sandhusen (2000) indicates that environmental factors and individual factors have an impact on consumer behavior.
Moreover, Raju (1980) summarized seven factors to explain consumer behavior: (1) repetitive behavior proneness -the tendency to choose the same brand/ product over time, (2) innovativeness -the eagerness to buy or know about new products of a brand, (3) risk taking -the preference for taking risk to try other brands, (4) exploration through shopping -the preference for buying products of a brand, (5) interpersonal communication -communicating with friends about purchasing, (6) brand switching -the curiosity to explore and change to different products/ brands, and (7) information seeking -interest in learning about products/brands. The seven factors used to conceptualize consumer behavior can be further simplified into three dimensions, namely, risk taking, variety seeking, and curiosity-motivated behaviors (McAlister & Pessemier, 1982;Raju, 1980). Based on the seven factors, Baumgartner and Steenkamp (1996)  Consumer behavior also has a close relationship with culture. Sandhusen (2000) identified cultural factor as a significant variable and argued that cultural differences and cultural values could affect consumer behavior. He found that cultural stimulus is one of the environmental stimuli affecting a consumer's response in terms of product choice, brand choice, dealer choice, purchase timing, and purchase amount.
Many scholars agreed that cultural factors have a great impact on consumer behavior. For example, Mooij (2000) indicated that the values of both consumers and marketers are dictated by their cultures, thus it is important to understand cultural values in the business transaction. Other scholars (e.g., MacGregor, 1983;Samli, 1995;Terpstra & David, 1985;Wallaces, 1964) also emphasized the critical role of culture plays in consumer behavior. Unfortunately, while scholars realized the importance of cultural factors in consumer behavior, none of them have investigated the impact from the perspective of cultural cringe and seldom paid attention to the market in China, which is one of the largest markets with great population in the world. This study attempts to improve this problem by examining the relationship between cultural cringe and consumer behavior in China.

Nike and Li-Ning
In order to examine the relationship between cultural cringe and consumer behavior, two similar brands, i.e., Nike from the US and Li-Ling from China, are used in this study. The reason for choosing the two companies is that both are popular in China with great market share and reputations among Chinese consumers. Nike with 40% market share in the US from late 90s has become a leading sports brands globally including in mainland China (Xin, 2012). Li-Ning ranks the first among all Chinese local sports brand with the greatest reputation as well (Huang, 2011). Both Nike and Li-Ning are sports brands with a focus on sports shoes, clothing and tools. The qualities of both brands are above average sports brands in Chinese market. "My Li-Ning sports shoes are great compared to other brands and I wore them about one year, they are still working well!" as a netizen named "583357" left his comment online ("MingXieKu", 2014).
Another one named "677745" said that "I love Nike's basketball shoes, they are comfortable and durable" ("MingXieKu", 2014). Moreover, in terms of the price, Li-Ning used to have lower price than Nike, but from 2011 Li-Ning raised the price with 20% (Qin, 2011), which narrows the difference between the two products with Nike's sports clothing ranging from 100 RMB to 1,200 RMB and Li-Ning's sports clothing ranging from 80 RMB to 1,000 RMB (" Li-Ning", 2013;. Li-Ning Company Limited (established in 1990) is a major Chinese athletic company producing athletic shoes and sporting goods. Li-Ning branded products targeted young consumers in sports such as running, basketball, badminton, football, tennis, and fitness. For many years, Nike has higher sales than Li-Ning (Forney & Jin, 2004). In order to attract more young consumers Li-Ning released a new logo and a new slogan, "Make the change" (" Li-Ning", 2013). Li-Ning also invited Chinese stars to promote its products, such as the well-known Chinese gymnast, also named Li Ning, badminton Champion, Lin Dan, and the super model, Lin Zhilin. Unfortunately, the changes were not very successful in attracting more young people and the company still experienced a decrease in sales in recent years, as the net profit decreased 15% (Chen, 2013).

Problem Statement
It is obvious that although targeting at similar consumers with similar sports products, Nike continues to grow in China, while Li-Ning is still facing the decrease in sales. Cultural cringe may be a plausible reason behind the consumers' brand choice in this case. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between cultural cringe and Chinese consumer behavior by asking the following research question:

RQ: Is there a relationship between cultural cringe and consumer behavior in
China?
In addition to the relationship of the two concepts, the demographic information of participants, including age, gender and others, are also analyzed.

Instruments
The questionnaire used in this study contains two sections (see Appendix A). The first section is consisted of two parts. The first part evaluates the degree of cultural cringe and the second part measures participants' consumer behavior. The first12 items (items 1-12) for measuring cultural cringe in the study are based on Xu's (2010) definition of the concept (Xu, 2010) (see Figure 1), which includes (1)   Responses are made on a 5-point Likert scale with "5" representing strong agreement, "1" representing strong disagreement, and "3" representing undecided. Before the questionnaire was finalized, three professors and graduate students in the related

RESULTS
To answer the research question Pearson product-moment correlations were computed. In addition, MANOVA were used to test the differences of gender and majors on the two scales. The results are summarized in Table 1. Because the factors are based on the two separate companies, mean scores of the factors and Pearson product moment correlation were conducted to see the score differences of the variables and the relationship between cultural cringe and the consumer behavior towards the two companies, the results are shown in Table 2 and Table 3. It was found that the mean score of Factor 1 (M = 2.57) is higher than the mean score of Factor 2 (M = 1.85). The results also show that cultural cringe is significantly and positively correlated with Factor 1 (r = .27, p < .01), while negatively correlated with Factor 2 (r = -.34, p < .01). Moreover, Factor 1 and Factor 2 also has a positive relationship (r = .14, p < .05).  The results from MONOVA show that no significant difference was found between males and females and other variables. However, the results indicate significant differences among Arts, Science, and Engineering majors on consumer behavior and the dimensions of exploration through shopping, innovativeness, and repetitive behavior proneness.
Finally, Arts students (M = 4.17, p < .05) scored significantly higher than Science students (M=4.02, p<.05) on repetitive behavior proneness. Arts students (M = 4.17, p < .05) also scored significantly higher than Engineering students (M = 4.04, p < .05) on repetitive behavior proneness. Science students (M = 4.02, p < .05) scored significantly higher than Engineering students (M = 4.04, p < .05) on repetitive behavior proneness.  Liu and Wang (2007) that Chinese consumers continue to show preference for the Western style. It also concurs with Du's (2011) observation that most of the Chinese may have the feeling of inferiority about their own culture, which reflects the symptom of cultural cringe in many aspects of their lives.
The results of the relationship between cultural cringe and the four dimensions of consumer behavior imply that a stronger cultural cringe of a Chinese consumer would lead to a high degree of eagerness, preference, interest, and tendency in buying or knowing about Nike's products over time (Raju, 1980). This can explain why for many years Nike has higher sales than Li-Ning in China (Forney & Jin, 2004). The results as well explain why after Nike invited NBA stars, such as Kobe Brian and LeBron James, to speak for the company, it gained 39.8% sales increase in 2013 (Forney & Jin, 2004;Lin, 2013), while the stars' promotion was not successful for Li-Ning and the company continues to experience a decrease in sales in recent years (Chen, 2013).
It is surprising to see that exploration through shopping and information seeking are negatively correlated with each other. A plausible explanation is that the question for information seeking, e.g., item 21, and only dictates one way of finding more about products, which may exclude other possible and popular ways such as online shopping.
This may result in that even though participants have a high level of exploration through shopping but score low in information seeking because they prefer online shopping instead of visiting physical stores. When Raju (1980) developed the seven dimensions of consumer behavior, online shopping as business transaction did not emerge yet, but today it has become a very common way for shopping in China, as demonstrated by the world's largest online population with 130 million residential broadband accounts in China (Dobbs, Chen, Orr, Manyika, Chui, & Chang, 2013