Exploring Consumers’ Perceptions of Product Offerings’ Authenticity Within Contemporary Asian Markets

The aim of this paper is to empirically explore consumers’ perceptions of authenticity in the context of market offerings. An exploratory qualitative approach was adopted and conducted through in-depth interviews. Our findings revealed that consumers, within the Chinese marketplace, do not evaluate product offerings based on the binary relationship between perceived authenticity and inauthenticity. In contrast, they view authenticity evaluation as relational and hierarchical, rather than in terms of originality and uniqueness. As a result, two additional types of authenticity emerged, that of domesticated and mimic authenticity.

Citation:

Martin Liu, Natalia Yannopoulou, and Richard Elliott (2011) ,"Exploring Consumers’ Perceptions of Product Offerings’ Authenticity Within Contemporary Asian Markets", in E - European Advances in Consumer Research Volume 9, eds. Alan Bradshaw, Chris Hackley, and Pauline Maclaran, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 566-568.