What If They Don’t Like You? An Investigation of Consumer Animosity amongst Urban Adult Chinese Consumers

This paper aims to investigate urban adult Chinese consumers (UACC)’s animosity towards the Japanese, Americans and French. It adopted a mixed methods approach that consists of street surveys and semi-structured interviews conducted in Northern and Southern China. It discovered that consumer animosity towards the Americans and French were relatively low and there was strong animosity towards the Japanese. It discovered a wide range of sources including school education, media influence, Japan’s close relationship to United States, concerns for further military clashes, Japanese government attitude towards war past, perceived consumer discrimination by Japanese companies, peer pressure etc. all contributed to UACC’s animosity towards the Japanese. Depending on the levels of animosity, some UACC could choose to boycott or avoid purchasing Japanese products.