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Do political tensions take a toll? The effect of the Sino-Japan relationship on sales of Japanese-brand cars in China

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Abstract

While much has been written about how consumers make decisions to purchase foreign brand-name products, relatively less is known about the effect of international relations on the market performance of the products of one country in another with which it has conflicts. Motivated by this gap in the literature, we test the effect of the relationship between China and Japan on automobile sales, and show that the effect of Sino-Japan relationship on the market performance of Japanese-brand cars in China is statistically significant, and that this significant effect lasts for 3 months at maximum.

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Notes

  1. Yasukuni Shrine is a Shinto shrine in Tokyo, Japan, founded to commemorate individuals who die in wars, including over 1000 convicted war criminals from World War II. Visits by Japanese government officials to the shrine are regarded by people in China and other Asian neighboring countries as disrespect of victims and denial of atrocities committed by Japan during the war.

  2. Details of the coding and procedures as well as explanations of this dataset are available at http://www.imir.tsinghua.edu.cn/publish/iis/7522/index.html.

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Acknowledgements

This research is supported by Tongji University Excellent Young Research Scholars Program (2011KJ032), granted to Yuan Yang and National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71203130; No. 71402122), Shanghai Pujiang Program (No. 12PJC054), and Program for Innovative Research Team of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics (No. 2014110344) granted to Min Tang.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Business Administration, School of Economics and Management, Tongji University, 1239 Siping Rd, Shanghai, 200433, China

    Yuan Yang

  2. School of Public Economics and Administration, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, 111 Wuchuan Rd, Shanghai, 200433, China

    Min Tang

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  1. Yuan Yang
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Correspondence to Min Tang.

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Yang, Y., Tang, M. Do political tensions take a toll? The effect of the Sino-Japan relationship on sales of Japanese-brand cars in China. Asian Bus Manage 13, 359–378 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1057/abm.2014.12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/abm.2014.12

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