Doctoral Dissertation Research: Consumer Demand in Postsocialist China

加州大学戴维斯分校的博士生Doris Duangboudda将在Li Zhang博士的指导下，研究汽车设计师如何策划车展，以创造中国中产阶级家庭的消费需求。 这项研究将在上海进行，上海是中国汽车生产和消费的主要场所，也是全国车展的主办地（每年与北京交替举行）。 中国的出口导向型经济需要由国内驱动，再加上世界经济衰退对中国市场的依赖性越来越大，这就需要认真研究消费者需求是如何产生的。 随着汽车消费成为政府和企业营销活动的中心焦点，车展的重要性也越来越高。 这项研究的目的是确定设计师在后社会主义国家中调解国家和企业参与的方式，并为中国的大众消费如何改变全球市场提供新的见解。 Doris Duangboudda将采用多种社会科学方法，包括正式访谈和参与者观察，从政府官员、企业代表、车展设计师、中产阶级家庭和个人那里获得经验数据。该项目对比了国家和市级政府以及国内外企业实体在车展上创造消费者需求的多重利益。 该项目还评估了家庭和个人如何在日常生活中解释和实施来自车展的中产阶级生活方式的想法。 本研究将有助于理解消费和阶级形成的后社会主义背景下。 通过确定潜在的变化消费模式，本研究旨在产生新的概念工具，看看如何消费可能是制度化的日常生活的一部分。 这项研究还将把消费与国家认同的形成和全球经济流动联系起来，并提供对美国工业有价值的信息。 资助这项研究还加强了与中国的国际学术合作，并支持研究生的教育。

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.