Marketing behaviour of Chinese enterprises : an empirical study.

China and Chinese enterprises have undergone a tremendous change in the past 20 years. From not recognising marketing and markets (a planned economy) to recognising marketing and markets; from a seller market to a buyer market, further developing to international competition, China's market-oriented economy has emerged in just over 20 years. The developing speed of China's market is unprecedented. The marketing concept appears to offer an approach to management that is dramatically new to China but much needed in its current state of development. \n \nThis thesis reports the results of an empirical study of the marketing behaviour of various types of Chinese enterprises and their application of the marketing concept. A mail survey of 820 Chinese enterprises across seven provinces and two cities was conducted, with a response rate of 54%. Correlation, factor analysis, cluster analysis and the Chi-square test were performed to examine the significance of five specific dimensions: (1) the marketing department and the marketing competitiveness of Chinese enterprises; (2) government control and marketing behaviour; (3) the structure of ownership of enterprises and marketing behaviour; (4) the marketing concept and marketing orientation; and (5) the employment of the Western marketing concept. \n \nAlthough the existing literature on Chinese industrial reform generally assumes that the enterprise's ownership has a significant effect on enterprises' marketing behaviour and market orientation, this research provides evidence that this assumption is not supported. The research develops a new idea to explore Chinese industrial enterprises' marketing behaviour and provides a finding that the type of enterprises' ownership is not a major factor to affect enterprises' marketing behaviour in today's China. \n \nReduced government control, intense competition and the emergence of a buyer's market have forced all types of Chinese enterprises to employ the Western marketing concept and Western marketing strategies, and to move towards a market orientation. However, the research shows that there are common misunderstandings about the marketing concept among Chinese enterprises, and that Chinese enterprises' marketing behaviour is still not very well developed. Moreover, due to China's distinctive social and cultural features (quo qing), the Western marketing concept and Western marketing strategies have to be modified if they are to be implemented in China. \n