Cross-national consumer segmentation of retail formats and consumption trends for Britain and Taiwan

• Main Author: Shiu, Chi Chung
• Published: University of Edinburgh 2002
• Subjects: 381
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.661877

This study uses four survey datasets across Britain and Taiwan to aim at conducting empirical and nationally representative cross-national consumer segmentation on four retail formats (Internet, hypermarket/superstore, supermarket, and traditional market) and two consumption trends (convenience and health trends). A diagnosis of equivalence, which precedes the segmentation process, suggests that the retail format data in the two countries are readily combinable, but the consumption trend data cannot be aggregated for cross-national consumer segmentation. Cross-national consumer segments of the hypermarket/superstore and the supermarket are found to be similar to each other. They are younger, financially better off, and living in the capital city. The only demographic characteristics that exist among supermarket shoppers but not hypermarket/superstore shoppers is gender. The female are more likely than the males to patronize the supermarket. This may be attributable to the notion that going to hypermarket/superstores often requires driving a car and taking bulky goods back home, which are arguably male tasks. On the other hand, hypermarket/superstore shoppers, rather than supermarket shoppers, are characterised by large household size. Cross-national consumer segments of the Internet and the traditional market, though found, are more real in words than in substance because of the significance of the national culture dimension that signifies the impracticability of the formation of pan-country consumer segments for each of these two retail formats. The result is understandable in the case of the traditional market, which has been widely acknowledged as a culturally bound institution. Yet the result seems astonishing in the case of the Internet, which has been noted as possessing very high internationalization capability and potential to transcend across national cultures. In contrast to the hypermarket/superstore and the supermarket, whose technologies have successfully transcended national cultures across Britain and Taiwan, Internet technology cannot successfully transcend national cultures across the two countries to the extent that cultural groupings are more influential than most of the personal background factors being considered in online shopping decision making.