THE ASIAN MILLENNIAL COSMOPOLITANS IN TAIWAN NIGHT MARKET

Kezia Sarah Abednego,Faye Jufei Kao 글로벌지식마케팅경영학회 2018 Global Marketing Conference Vol.2018 No.07

This study relies on Gustafson’s (2001) self-environment-others framework to investigate Asian millennials’ cosmopolitan discourse in the context of Taiwan night market. In the eyes of Asian millennial cosmopolitans, the local Taiwan night market experience not only represents local consumption pattern, but also reflects the global appropriation of local consumption meaning. Introduction Asian millennials are those who were born in the early 1980s until 2000s. They are the “lucky” generation to grow up in the economic resurrection in Asia. They possess distinguished characteristics from the previous generations (Chu & Welsh, 2015). Therefore, they emerge to become the influential change agents. Their cultural consumption behaviour and preference has significant influence on local cultural experience design. Cosmopolitanism in consumer culture refers to an identity discourse in respond to globalization. Cosmopolitan identity inspires ones to seek personal enrichment through consumption of cultural diversity (Thompson & Tambyah, 1999). The concept of cosmopolitanism can be traced back to two parallel perspectives: Greek Stoicism (Appiah, 2010) and Chinese Confucianism (Chun, 2012). The western cosmopolitanism conceptualizes cosmopolitans as the citizen of cosmos. Showing loyalty toward the worldly community and against the community where ones had been born is the major conduct that these cosmos citizens are oriented toward to (Delanty & He, 2008). In contrast, the eastern cosmopolitanism originates from the concept of Tianxia (天下) (Chun, 2012), which is based on the natural geography, the concept of political control from the central power to all the remote areas, and the concept of ethical conduct within the regime of the common area. Recent research on cosmopolitanism recognizes the possible variations of cosmopolitanism in different cultural context (Chun, 2012), and perpetuates the need to investigate cosmopolitanism as socio-cultural specific forms(Delanty & He, 2008). Enlighted by this notion, this study investigates an alternative form of cosmopolitan discourse specific to the rising Asian millennials, and its implications in local night market culture experience design. Night market as the venue for cultural experience study Night market is a common marketplace in Asia. Over 1,000 years (since Sung Dynasty A.D. 960 – 1279) night market has already existed in China. Night market has dispersed to other Asian countries along with the regional migration of Chinese ethnic group (Pottie-Sherman & Hiebert, 2013). Despite its Chinese origin, night market has evolved to a cosmopolitan consumption space providing local cultural experiences. It was found that there are seven dimensions of cultural experiences (Yu, 2004): night time (Zerubavel, 1985), shi (市/market), xiaochi (小吃/ small food), vending/vendor, temporality, renao (熱鬧/ lively and crowded condition), and renqingwei (人情味 / human touch). Night market provides local experience for global visitors (Chen, Lee, Chang, Hou, & Lin, 2008). Therefore, this study chooses night market as the consumption venue for investigation. Methodology This study relies on Gustafson’s (2001) tri-polar model of self-environment-others to guide the post-structuralist reading of field observation scripts. Self is the agent to interpret the meaning of the place; environment refers to the socio-cultural aspects of the physical place; others refer to the dynamic social aspects in the place. The informants were all Indonesians. The two authors went with two Indonesian MBA graduates to Huayuan Night Market in the first trip. The first author went with six Indonesian MBA students to Dadong Night Market in a second trip. The two night markets visited in this study were Huayuan Night Market (花園夜市) on November 3rd 2016, and Dadong Night Market (大東夜市) on November 22nd 2016. Both of the night markets were located in Tainan, Taiwan. Result In this session, we synthesized the qualitative data, and integrated the result with existing literatures to discuss the characteristics of Asian millennial cosmopolitans. 1. A cosmopolitan identity rooted on confucianism’s tianxia (天下) The notion of tianxia has already emerged starting in Xia Dynasty (Chun, 2012). Tianxia is rooted from Confucius (551 – 479 B.C) from the traditional literature of liyundatong (禮運大同). Since then, the concept has been embedded in the historical development of Chinese geographic expansion experiences, and in the fusion of the invading alien culture in China. The cosmopolitan ideology of tianxia can be found in the night market. Night market is a place that open for all. The visitors were diverse. Not only the local people (the Taiwanese) but also foreign people can enjoy the lively atmosphere of the night market. Those who had money and status also can come to enjoy the night market, not only limited for those in the “low social class”. Even though night market perceived as the marginal place, but in the night market all people are the same. Everyone can enjoy. 2. A transient cosmopolitan identity based on mass media, global brand consumption, and tourism international travel The Asian consumer cosmopolitanism mostly spawned from the popular culture disseminated from mass media, global brand consumption, or tourist traveling. People relying on mass media and global brand consumption as venues for exchange of identities, ideas, images, religion, language, music, lifestyle, sport, etc (Huang, 2006). The usage of English as the second language, household living standard, years of schooling, and economics of internalization are the greatest aspect of high level of cosmopolitanism in Asia (Brown & Baogang, 2012). In addition, because of the increasing tourists traveling around the world, the cosmopolitan lifestyle characterizes the Asia millennials as moving out of their locals temporarily. Tourism and international travel are related to lifestyle cosmopolitanism and critical cosmopolitanism. Those characteristics differ from those cosmopolitans of the diaspora moving permanently out of their home countries. Similar to European counterparts with several identities simultaneously (Ong, 1999), however, the Asian millennials’ identities are more transient and fluid. Night market provides a temporary consumption space for the locals to indulge in authentic lower social class experience, and for the foreign visitors to sample local experience. 3. An imagined cosmopolitan identity Because of the low social class, who are the major visitors at night market, have lower disposable income, the visitors of night market choose to consume counterfeits as long as they can be seen as “wealthy class”, which often associated with a cosmopolitan image (Huat, 2004). Counterfeits provide them imagined experience to participate in material consumption beyond their affordable income. The Asian millennials also are capable of relied on the images of lower social class from mass media to appropriate their night market experience, which results in an imagined cosmopolitan experience. The night market is an evidence of a space depicting the imagined cosmopolitan consumption experience. 4. Double marginality The primary marginality comes form night market itself. Night market is perceived as the marginal place since the patronages are mostly from the lower social class in the society (Yu, 1995). Night market is regarded as a place selling the counterfeits and low quality items, which are accessible to those who cannot afford to buy the originals. The secondary marginality comes from the cosmopolitan identity. Cosmopolitans orient their mind to a broader identity like the nation or the world. The cosmopolitans are rootless who do not belong to any one community, and hence, marginal (Merton, 1957). In addition, the Asian cosmopolitans are perceived as marginal in the global cosmopolitan context since they are peripheral to the core of the global or western dominated cosmopolitans. 5. A sense of one community identity The other way to see the Asia cosmopolitanism is based in the civilizational crossfertilization. This civilizational is the result of cross-cultural fertilization as against to separate and autonomous civilizations. The hybrid cultural form of Asia provides fertile ground to develop cosmopolitanism. The Asian millennials emphasize the “we” cosmopolitans as an opposed to “I” cosmopolitans. The Asian millennials went in a group either with friends from the same ethnic background, or with their local Taiwanese friends. Asia profess collectivism, which is tending to strong community orientation (Holbrook & Hirschman, 1982). The Asian cosmopolitans believe that they are in the same state or level of development state or in the same time zone other part of Asian, and later they made the imagined community. They also believe there is a cultural relationship in the various Asian countries (Funabashi, 1992), that is the Confucianism (Delanty & He, 2008). Evidence from night market study showed the strong sense of belonging as a group. When some members from the group were in trouble, someone would offer to be a “savior” to help. 6. Cautious cosmopolitans Although similar to the European counterparts of having a penchant to consume the authentic product or service, looking for variety and the exotic simulation, and relying heavily on the social media, the Asian millennial cosmopolitans tend to show a follower characteristic when exploring new experience. Also, they are mostly like a passive participants or mere observers in the foreign experience. conclusions and implications to cultural experience design This study relies on the framework of self-environment-others (Gustafson, 2001) to investigate Asian millennials’ cosmopolitanism in Taiwan local night market context. This research finds that in addition to the same characteristics of their western counterparts, Asian millennial cosmopolitans exhibit five unique characteristics. Although the local Taiwan night market is expected to render authentic local consumption, it is experienced as an imagined global practice. Or, alternatively, the imagined global culture consumption is experienced as authentic local. While the Aisan millennials eager to experience the local night market cultural authenticity, they also constantly refer to their similar home night market culture meaning framework. For the Asian millennials, the Taiwanese local experience is framed in both an imagined global meaning context, and an authentic other locals, i.e. the idiosyncratic home culture meaning frameworks of the cosmopolitans’. However, the Asian millennial cosmopolitans are capable of appropriating the gaps in these cultural meaning discourses. The appropriation process is where local, and global cultural meaning has the opportunity to be redefined, and reorganized. The implications from this study can be applied to local cultural experience design. The results also provides valuable perspectives for culture institutions, such as night market managing organizations, in their communication strategy to these Asian millennial cosmopolitans.