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Qualitative Sociology
Published in: Qualitative Sociology 4/2018

08-10-2018

Escaping the Interpersonal Power Game: Online Shopping in China

Author: Xiaoli Tian

Published in: Qualitative Sociology | Issue 4/2018

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Abstract

The increasing popularity of online shopping is now a global phenomenon, and China has become the largest internet market in the world. The reasons behind this preference for online shopping are examined in this study through 63 in-depth interviews and five years of virtual ethnography of a major online shopping website—Taobao.​com—in China. Chinese customers prefer Taobao not only because of price and convenience, but also because they enjoy the interactional process, during which they obtain more information, feel less pressured to put on a status performance in comparison to physical stores, and pay less affective labor. Chinese customers tend to believe that interaction with sales clerks in physical shops is a burden, and try to avoid this form of contact. This is related to the fact that consensus on status hierarchy is still yet to be established in a society that is undergoing rapid transition. Consequently, online shopping entails social interaction that attributes more power, autonomy and freedom to customers than otherwise possible in brick-and-mortar shopping. This study shows how both the online interactional environments afforded by technology and the broader social contexts (the service quality and related aspects of status competition among different social groups in contemporary China) affect interpersonal interaction.
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Footnotes
1
Annual active consumers on Alibaba’s China retail marketplaces reached 515 million, an increase of 27 million from the 12-month period ended September 30, 2017 (Alibaba Group, 2018).
 
5
Recent research has pointed out that despite “everyone is equal” being only a myth during the socialist period in China (Yu 2014), people still tend to believe that egalitarianism existed at that time.
 
6
Launched by Alibaba in 2009, Singles’ Day is November 11th when products on Taobao are sold at discounted prices.
 
7
Each Taobao customer can create a “my favorite store” list within the Taobao interface.
 
8
In this paper, I focus on urban areas. However, Taobao has also changed rural economic and social life, most notably in the “Taobao villages” where many farmers start their business online by selling products from furniture to agricultural products. See Liu et al. (2015).
 
9
While this is in line with the general trend of transition from selling goods and services to selling experiences, such as entertainment and educational events (Pine and Gilmore 1998), what is unique in Chinese shopping malls is that the selling of goods, especially those that involve more interaction with salespersons (apparel) have quickly shrunk in recent years.
 
10
Some features of online shopping might make it more likely to be addictive than offline shopping, such as easy access to new item and promotion information; however, other features are counterproductive to addictive behaviors. For example, after making a purchase online, customers need to wait for delivery. Therefore the technology of the online shopping platform itself cannot explain for the addiction to online shopping.
 
11
Empirical research in other contexts also confirmed that 60% of the respondents consult online consumer reviews before purchasing a new product or service (Cheung et al. 2015).
 
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Metadata
Title
Escaping the Interpersonal Power Game: Online Shopping in China
Author
Xiaoli Tian
Publication date
08-10-2018
Publisher
Springer US
Published in
Qualitative Sociology / Issue 4/2018
Print ISSN: 0162-0436
Electronic ISSN: 1573-7837
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-018-9397-8

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