Doctoral Dissertation Research: Consumer Demand in Postsocialist China

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University of California-Davis doctoral student Doris Duangboudda, under the guidance of Dr. Li Zhang, will investigate how auto designers plan auto shows in an effort to create consumer demand among middle class families in China. The research will be conducted in Shanghai, a major site for automobile production and consumption in the country, as well as host of the national auto show (which alternates annually with Beijing). The need for China's export-oriented economy to be domestically driven, coupled with a greater dependence of declining world economies on the Chinese market, requires serious examination of how consumer demand is created. As car consumption has become a central focus of government and corporate marketing initiatives, auto shows take on heightened importance. The objective of this research is to identify the ways in which designers mediate state and corporate engagement in postsocialist countries, and offer new insights into how China's mass consumption might transform global markets. Doris Duangboudda will employ multiple social science methods, including formal interviews and participant-observation, to obtain empirical data from government officials, corporate representatives, auto show designers, and middle class families and individuals. This project contrasts the multiple interests of national and municipal levels of government and domestic and foreign corporate entities in creating consumer demand at auto shows. This project also evaluates how families and individuals interpret and implement ideas about middle class lifestyles derived from auto shows in their daily lives. This research will contribute to the understanding of consumption and class formation in a postsocialist context. By identifying potentially changing consumption patterns, this study seeks to produce new conceptual tools to look at the how consumption might be institutionalized as a part of everyday life. This research will also empirically link consumption with national identity formation and global economic flows and provide information that could be valuable to US industry. Funding this research also strengthens international scholarly collaborations with China and supports the education of a graduate student.