Malaysian Chinese Consumer Behaviours: Heterogeneity in Ethnicity and Acculturation Influence on Consumer’s Perceived Value in Consumption

The rise of China’s economy has contributed to dramatic increase of ethnic Chinese-related consumer research. However, those researches are mainly tailored to enhance knowledge of Chinese consumers in the Mainland China or Overseas Chinese in Western countries. In fact, the Malaysian Chinese is unique and highly distinctive among the ethnic Chinese. They are living in multicultural environment and having highly westernised lifestyle. Thus, this dissertation is attempt to explore new insight and develop further knowledge of Malaysian Chinese consumers’ (aged 25 – 34) behaviour which has been under-researched for sometimes. Ethnic Chinese have resided in Malaysia for few generations. Marketing researchers (Ong, 1993; Mokhlis, 2009) found that there is no homogenous among Malaysian Chinese in terms of ethnic attitudes and consumer behaviours. Therefore, it would be appropriate to explore Malaysian Chinese’s ethnicity ties and self ethnic identification, because it is important in determine continuation of Chinese culture influence. Besides, the research will also continue to unfold the affect of Chinese culture influences on Malaysian Chinese consumers’ perceived value in consumption. The qualitative research approach has been adopted in this research. Three naturalistic group interviews and two in-depth interviews were conducted to interview three groups of informants, namely consumers, marketer and retailer. The research findings have supported the heterogeneity in consumer behaviour of Malaysian Chinese consumers aged 25 – 34. As well, it was found that majority of Malaysian Chinese consumers show weak ethnicity ties, moderate to high level of acculturation and seem less affected by most Chinese cultural values in their consumption. Furthermore, the Functional value is the most important perceived value in consumption among Malaysian Chinese consumers. While there is not strong evident support Overby et al.’s (2005) proposition that culture influence consumer’s perceived value, yet there is a tendency that Malaysian Chinese consumers’ value perception are instinctively affected by some deep-rooted Chinese cultural values, such as ‘Face’ and ‘Family orientated’