Running head: CONSUMERS HAVE ALL THE CONTROL 1

Consumers Have All the Control

Jing Gao, Yunhan Jiao, Emma Sheehan, Dapai Wang, Shan Xu

Penn State University

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Literature Review

The purpose of this document is to successfully analyze qualitative and quantitative data

that was conducted in this research study about Consumer Behaviors. The demographic

specifically for this study was Chinese International students. We chose Chinese International

Students because the majority of the people conducting this study are Chinese International

students at Penn State. Students from the United States may or may not have different consumer

behaviors than Chinese International students because of cultural differences, barriers, lifestyle

choices, environmental factors and others. “Studying consumer behaviors helps marketers to

investigate and understand the way in which consumers behave so that they can position their

products to specific group of people or targeted individuals” (Essays, 2013). Consumers have all

the control because they are the ones spending the money. It is interesting that there are millions

of different topics that can be studied while analyzing their behaviors. This study focuses on five

topics regarding consumer behaviors, fashion, makeup, transportation, staying accommodations,

and online food delivery.

We as consumers of the fashion industry have a lot of different reasons as to why we

contribute to it. Some people contribute for loving fashion and clothes, or because of the effect of

social media, or just simply because they have to wear clothes on daily basis. This multi-trillion-

dollar industry (Amed, Berg, Brantberg, & Hedrich) is something that will never come to an end

so focusing in on the consumer behaviors in the age of technology is interesting to see. We as

consumers have seen many different forms of marketing from the media but, social media is now

said to be one of the most crucial forms of advertising in 2018. “Promoting products via social 

media influencers can be categorized as a form of subconscious marketing. For ages, brands and 

advertisers have been seeking to shape consumers’ thoughts, attitudes, and behavior, without us 
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even being aware of it” (Fastenau, 2018). That being said, what influences Chinese

International students to buy clothes and keep up on trends and how do they accumulate these

pieces?

In today’s contemporary society, an increasingly larger percentage of consumers would

favor online shopping. A study done by Hairong Li and others, found that women in general have

the tendency to shop online more frequently and in larger amounts (Li, Kuo & Rusell, 2006).

Shopping for makeup online is one of the largest categories for women in terms of shopping,

combined with the fact that shopping has taken a dramatic shift from being mainly done in-store

or through catalogue to a more digital format (Lopaciuk & Loboda, 2013). With regard to

Chinese international students, who are from a different language, background, and country,

from domestic students in the United States, there a lot of factors that influence international

students to shop for beauty products online. Therefore, What influences Chinese international

student shopping makeup online?

Traveling on a daily basis is a major struggle for Chinese International students at Penn

State especially, students that do not have access to a car. I didn’t find any articles related to

Chinese international students’ consumer behavior on transportation, but according to Wallsten

(2015), “In Chicago, Uber’s growth is associated with a decline in particular types of complaints

about taxis, including broken credit card machines, air conditioning and heating, rudeness, and

talking on cell phones.” This shows that local residents like to use Uber because taxi companies

had a lot of issues. Chinese international students are beginning to come to the United States at a

younger age, and it is known that many Chinese international students do not own a car or know

how to drive. So, public and new transportation is very crucial in daily travel. Nowadays,

Uber/Lyft are easily accessible and are most likely preferred over taxi to get from point A to
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point B (Cramer and Krueger, 2016). That being said, what motivates Chinese international

students to choose to take the taxi or Uber/Lyft in daily travel?

For the last recent years, there were so many food delivery services that were launched

online (Daryan, 2018). These online services gave customers so many choices to get their food

other than actually go to the restaurants (IGBAJI, 2017). A lot of local and chain restaurants are

are connected to companies for online food delivery services like Grubhub/OrderUp. In the

State College are and other smaller cities there are locally owned online delivery services. For

example, One Menu and Ricepo are two popular platforms in State College for Chinese

International students. They appear as Chinese language Apps and their focus customer is

Chinese International Students at Penn State. In order to answer the question, what are the

Chinese international students’ consumer behaviors toward online food delivery services? The

purpose of this is to discover the percentage of market sharing for different services and people’s

consumption habits on food delivery experiences.

Airbnb has become popular in the hospitality industry in recent years which has brought

many new product and service standards (Guttentag, 2017). Airbnb was established in August

2008 by Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia and Nate Blecharczyk in San Francisco, California. Its

mission is to, “Book unique homes and experiences all over the world.” (Airbnb, 2018). On their

website and app, there are more than 5 million listings of various types of properties, in 191

countries and 81,000 cities all over the world. There are various types of properties, such as

entire homes, apartments, castles, villas, private rooms, and shared rooms. Moreover, there are

unique accommodations for example, boats, tree houses, tipis, igloos, private islands, and etc.

The real estates are different regarding the level of comfort, meaning they can vary from simple

to luxurious and they can be rented for days, weeks, or months. (Airbnb, 2018). Airbnb is an
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application in sharing economy, it represents a peer-to-peer marketplace in the sharing economy.

Whereas the revenue comes from both customers and owners (Zervas, 2017). Through Airbnb,

hosts rent their places in a short-term manner at a lower price than traditional accommodation

such as hotels. Therefore, both sides involved in the sharing economic process and have a win-

win situation (Guttentag, 2017). To discover customer behavior in choosing to stay with Airbnb

and the attributes they are looking for such as personal factors and social factors lead to the

question, Why do people choose Airbnb instead of Hotel to spend leisure time with their friends

and family exploring different and various tourism destinations throughout the world?

Methods

The purpose of this document is to discuss the topics being covered in the research

project focusing on consumer behaviors. The main point of this is to see how our demographic,

Chinese international students spend their money on certain things and why. There are five main

questions underneath the main focus of consumer behaviors which are about fashion, beauty,

staying accommodations, food delivery services and ride shares/transportation. The questions

include, “How do Chinese international students keep up with trends and how do they

accumulate these pieces”, “Why do Chinese international students choose Airbnb instead of

Hotel to spend leisure time with their friends and family exploring different and various tourism

destinations throughout the world”, “What are Chinese international student’s consumer

behaviors toward online food delivery services?”, “Why do Chinese international students buy

makeup products online?” , “What motivates Chinese international students to choose to take the

taxi or Uber in daily travel?” These are crucial and are being studied because it is interesting to

see why and how students spend money on these different types of things. It was fascinating to

see what people think is most important to spend money on a daily or weekly basis.
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As mentioned above, our demographic are Chinese international students. We geared our

surveys and interviews toward this specific group of people because there are not a lot of studies

that have Chinese international students as their participants. It was helpful to have this

demographic because 4 out of 5 of our researches are Chinese international students. In order to

get participants, we used the social media app called WeChat, where a majority of the

international students are on, to advertise our survey. The group members on WeChat reached

out to users asking people to complete our survey. This is an app where you can post similar to

Facebook, where your friends or followers can see. There are also Asian international clubs such

as Chinese Language and Culture Club, Chinese Undergraduate Student Association and Chinese

Dance Clubs, on campus. The survey was be open for about a week, so we could try to get as

many participants as we could. We were hoping we get participants from the surveys for the

individual interviews however, we ended up finding participants by directly asking Chinese

International students we knew.

All the research questions in the survey were mostly quantitative data with either multiple

choice or yes/no questions. This made it easier to organize. The qualitative data was collected in

the 3 individual separate interviews. The interview questions were geared toward general

consumer behavior questions. Depending on the direction each interview went, probing

questions were asked. There were two of us in each individual interview. One person asking

questions and one person writing information down. From the data collected in the survey we

made charts to clearly show differences in certain topics of the consumer choices i.e. if they

prefer uber or taxi, online or in-store shopping, and Grubhub or Deliveroo. The charts showed

preferences and data that was be shown from Chinese international students. Each group

member collected their own specific data from the surveys under their own theme (fashion,
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beauty, staying accommodations, online delivery services and ride shares/transportation

methods). Along with other responsibilities, we all had main focuses. Emma edited the logistics

of the surveys and most of the written assignments as well as sat in on one of the interviews. Jing

and Susan will be reached out to the organization presidents. Susan, Yunhan, Jing, and Patrick all

advertised and found people to take our survey from the WeChat app. Susan, Yunhan, Jing, and

Patrick will also be asked who they knew for the individual interviews because they have a lot of

connections in the community. We did a lot of the work together but because 4 out of the 5

researchers speak Chinese, they interacted with the actual participants more than Emma did.

Our survey like mentioned above, was open within about a week time frame so

participants had a lot of time while we also gathered information quickly. Because a minimum of

30 people needs to take the survey, we tried to make it as concise as possible while hitting

everything we needed to. We used Google Forms for the online survey. Consumer behaviors is a

broad theme with many topics underneath it. Since not all of the participants were not interested

in some of the themes, we used skip logic after answering the overall theme questions, i.e. “do

you use makeup?” If the answer is “yes”, the participant continued answering questions about

makeup, if the answer was “no” then they skipped the makeup section and went on to the next

one. We wanted to do this so the participant would not waste their time answering questions that

does not pertain to them. For the individual interviews there were some general consumer based

questions. The overall question was “What do you take into account when buying things?” and

from there we will go on to ask questions that will be geared toward what they spend their

money on and their interests. For example, if the participant was not interested in

fashion/clothing and they were interested in talking about food delivery services we asked

questions that were directed toward that.

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Results

Our online survey was taken by 31 people all of which were accumulated from the app

WeChat, a social media platform specifically for the Chinese population. 58.1 % of the

participants were females and 49.9% were males. We had a large range of ages that took our

survey ranging from the ages 19 to 25. There was one outsider that took our survey a that was

“66 years old,” see Figure 1: Age. All of the participants were confirmed Chinese international

students while 71% of the participants were from Penn State and 29% were not.

Clothing and Fashion: Quantitative Data

From the online survey, Consumer Behaviors, about 96.8% of the respondents said they

do like to shop for clothes and 32.8 % of the participants prefer to shop in-store as opposed to

online which was 67.7%. 74.2% of the respondents follow fashion social media influencers on

Instagram and 73.3% of them are influenced by them to buy more clothes. Only 12.9% of the

respondents do not have an Instagram so those people are not necessarily inclined to buy and

shop more from social media. From the participants in the survey, 58.1% of people prefer fast

fashion brands over luxury brands (41.9%).

One of the questions that was included in the online survey was “Do you use your own

money to buy clothes?” this may have an effect on the participants for a number of reasons like

whether or not they buy from luxury or fast fashion brands too. As you can tell by Figure 2, there

were a variety of different answers to whether or not the participants spend their own money on

clothes.

As you can tell by Figure 3, the question was, “How often do you base what you wear on

the environment you are in (suburb or city)?” This means whether or not people dress a certain

way or differently because they are in for example, State College or New York City. There were
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5 different options for this question (very often, often, sometimes, rarely, and never). The options

“sometimes” and “often” were 35.5% and tied. Lastly, there was a question based on lifestyle

choices (e.g. working out) and whether or not people dress for them on a daily basis for example.

As you can tell from Figure 4, the majority of the respondents, 56.7% said they do base their

lifestyle choices on what they wear.

Clothing and Fashion: Qualitative Data

From our interviews with three Chinese International students, one common theme in

their clothing and shopping behaviors is convenient. Convenience is important because most of

the participants from the survey said they prefer to shop online as opposed to in-store and

shopping online is more convenient for most people. One of the interviewees, Chushi, said, “I

prefer to shop online but, like to buy electronics more than clothes.” On the other hand, Elena,

another interviewee, said that she buys from clothing stores online every single day because she

likes to shop and it is easier. Justin, the third interviewee said he likes to search for things online

because it is more organized.

Advertisements is another theme. Advertisements on social media and on the internet

make consumers more inclined to buy products. Elena said that she is influenced by

advertisements on social media to buy clothes and that’s why she shops online so much. Justin

said “I am more inclined to buy clothes from ads on websites and on YouTube.”

Staying Accommodations: Quantitative Data

From the online survey, 74.2% of the participants have previously used Airbnb. Within a

year, 57.7% of the participants use Airbnb 1-2 times, 23.1% of participants used 3-5 times, and

19.2% of participants used more than 5 times. Eight of the participants used Airbnb in China, 24

participants in the United States, and 4 participants used in other countries such as Japan,
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Morocco, and Thailand. At the end of the survey, 88.5% of the participants said that they would

use Airbnb again in the future.

The people who used Airbnb before rated from 1-5 on their experience with Airbnb. 44%

of the participants rated 5, and 22.2% of the participants rated a 3. Every 11.1% of the

participants rated their experience as scale of 1, 2, and 5. Refer to Figure 5.

Airbnb has many different types of properties, such as entire place, apartments, castles or

villas, private rooms, shared rooms. According to Figure 6, 18 participants have stayed in

apartment, 7 have stayed in private room, 2 have stayed in shared room, 1 have stayed in castles

or villas, and 1 have stayed in others.

A variety of motivations attract guests to Airbnb. Primarily, Airbnb guests are attracted to

the service’s practical advantages (for example, cost, location, and amenities) and the

appeals (for example, authenticity, novelty, and interaction) are secondary (Guttentag, 2017).

According to Figure 7 from the survey, 21 participants were affected by cost, 17 affected by

location, 5 affected by amenities, 6 affected by authenticity, 5 affected by novelty, and 3 affected

by interaction.

Staying Accommodations: Qualitative Data

Justin, one of the interviewees said he likes to use Airbnb only when he is sharing with

friends. He said he prefers Airbnb because there are hosts that know the best local information.

Chushi Hu the second interviewee, prefers a decent price and condition when looking for

Airbnbs. Chushi likes Airbnb more than hotels because it feels “home-yer.” He said “It depends

on where I go, if I choose Airbnb or a hotel. If I am going to New York I prefer a hotel over

Airbnb and if I am going to small or specific area, I prefer Airbnb.”

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Elena the third interviewee said that she likes Airbnb more because it’s cheaper and

convenient for her. She then added that if she is going to New York City should would rather use

Airbnb because of the price. She prefers to use hotels with her friends on vacations and Airbnbs

with her family.

Transportation: Quantitative Data

From the survey, there are 77.4% of participants said they know how to drive and 22.6%

of participants said they do not know how to drive. There are 87.1% of participants that use

Uber/Lyft for transportation, 3.2% of participants use taxis for transportation and 9.7% of

participants do not use Uber/Lyft or taxi for transportation.

Referring to Figure 8 above, for the reasoning why the participants use Uber/Lyft and

Taxis. For those who use Uber/Lyft, there are 66.7% of participants use it 1-5 times per week.

About 23.3% of participants do not use Uber/Lyft at all per week. On the contrary, 6.7% of

participants use 10-15 times uber/lyft per week and 3.3% of participants use 6-10 times per

week. For those who use taxis, there are 89.7% of participants do not use taxis per week, 6.9% of

participants use it 1-5 times per week, and 3.4% of participants use 10-15 times taxi per week.

For those who use other transportation, there are 34.5% of participants use 6-10 times other

transportations per week, 27.6% of participants use 10-15 times other transportations per week,

24.1% of participants use 1-5 times other transportations per week and 13.8% of participants do

not use other transportations per week.

Transportation: Qualitative Data

The price is one of the themes. It will change people’s choice on transportation. One

interviewee Justin uses public transportation to go to school and has only used a taxi once. He

thinks that taxis are cheaper than Uber and Lyft, so he chooses to take taxi. Chushi, another
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interviewee, he said that he prefers to take public transportation and does not take Uber or Lyft

often. Also, he has only taken Uber once but would prefer to take a taxi because it is cheaper.

Another theme is convenience. Our interviewee Justin said “because you can have an app

for Uber and Lyft, it is easier for me to communicate with the driver so they know exactly where

I am without directly speaking to them and having a miscommunication between languages.”

Our third interviewee, Elena on the other hand said that in State College, she likes to use Uber

because it is more convenient and taxis take longer to come. However, she gets hesitate when it

comes to using Uber because of safety reasons.

Online Food Delivery Services: Quantitative Data

According to the online survey, 83.9% of participants have used online food delivery

services in State College and almost 90% of them are living off campus. About 59.3% of the

participants like to order food online for dinner. More than 70% of our participants use Ricepo or

One Menu when they are ordering food online. On the contrary, only 20% of our participants use

Grubhub.

Food Delivery Services: Qualitative Data

Justin said that he likes to use Grubhub, UberEats, Recipo, and One Menu in the Penn

State area. He said that he uses different online services because they have different delivery fees

and they have different restaurants on them. Justin uses most of his money on delivery services

at Penn State. Chushi the second interviewee, only uses online food delivery services one or

twice a month. He likes that you don’t have to move but does not like that it takes a long time

and there is an expensive delivery fee. Chushi said, “I do not like that I can’t see the food

actually looks like that will be delivered to me.”

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Elena said that she uses food delivery platforms about once a week. She uses Grubhub,

Recipo, and One Menu. She said that, “The advantage to online delivery is that I don't need to go

somewhere to pick up my food but, I don't really like it because their service is not as good as I

would expect.” Elena likes a variety of restaurants but prefers to come Chinese restaurants over

others depending on delivery fees.

Makeup: Quantitative Data

About 64.5% of people wear makeup from the survey and all of those participants that

wear makeup, prefer to shop online for makeup. About 58.1% of the participants said that they

watch YouTubers that buy and use beauty products.

Referring to Figure 10, 41.7% of respondents thought convenience was the reason why

they were inclined to buy makeup online. 37.5% of the participants think that online reviews are

the reason why they buy makeup online, and 20.8 % people said that no human interaction was

the main reason they shop online.

70% of the participants from Figure 11, think seeing the physical products is the reason

why they shop in-store. About 13.3% of the respondents for each answer, “Employee/Customer

Relationship” and “Experience” said they shop in-store for those reasons.

Qualitative Data: Makeup

Justin said that he buys makeup for his girlfriend online and uses the reviews online to

determine what he gets. “I will choose online shopping even I know there is a makeup store

nearby. I don’t care about how good the makeup is, I am not the one who uses it, I just search

online for what is said to be good.” Elena prefers to use Sephora to buy makeup as opposed to

Ulta. She mentioned that, “For Sephora, when they have 20% off, I buy from them. Even though

I'm not necessarily someone who buys makeup often, I am more likely to spend money on
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products when they have a discount option.” Elena said that if they had a Sephora store in State

College she would still prefer to shop online.

Discussion

Clothing and Fashion

Because of how convenient it is nowadays to shop online, more and more people are

beginning to do so because of the wide selection of products and it being convenient (Reasons

consumers shop online, 2017). Technology has transformed advertising on Instagram and the

fashion industry as a whole by having social media influencers doing sponsorships for

company’s products and pieces. “Today, social networks in general and Instagram in particular

have become an essential medium, not to mention a vital sales channel for fashion brands”

(Moatti, 2018). From the online survey that was conducted, the majority participants who said

they have an Instagram account also follow social media fashion influencers. Also, Elena, one of

the interviewees said that she shops online everyday and buys clothes because of influencers to

keep up on trends. Additionally, social media affects luxury brands in a positive way. A Forbes

magazine article (Solomon, 2017) about how millennials are a different type of consumer than

prior generations included a quote saying, "Consuming products and brands is not just a way to

say who you are but a way to define who you are." One of the questions on the online survey

included, “Do you prefer to shop at fast fashion companies or luxury brands?” It was interesting

that the majority of the participants who answered this question said they prefer fast fashion but

it was very close to the number of people who prefer luxury brands. I think that more people are

beginning to spend money on luxury items because social media influencers wear a lot of name

brands.
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Additionally, because college students sometimes do not have any income or salaries

parents or guardians tend to pay for their clothes, food and other essentials. This was proven

from the participants that they rely on them to buy their clothes and almost the same amount said

that “sometimes” they pay for their own clothes. This was surprising because initially it was

expected a larger number would have said “no” to “Do you spend your own money on clothes?”

That being said it, was interesting that a larger number of the participants said they do not spend

their own money on clothes and that the numbers for the preference of fast fashion and

preference of luxury brands was close. This puts into perspective that influencers may do in fact

have the marketing effect on people to spend their parent/guardians money or their own on

luxury items. Lastly, one of the interviewers mentioned that he prefers to shop for athleisure

because it is easier and what he likes. This connects to his overall lifestyle choices of working

out and being comfortable. From the online survey most of the people did in fact say that their

lifestyle choices like working out on a daily basis or wearing a uniform for job everyday.

Overall, I think that collecting and analyzing data about consumers behaviors within the fashion

industry was interesting especially, within this demographic. I think that Chinese International

student reflect the consumer trends in fashion purchasing from the survey results and individual

interviews. Because advertising on social media is so pertinent in the age of technology, luxury

companies should continue to send their products and market through influencers in order to get

more business.

Transportation

Nowadays, technology has developed so much that apps like Uber and Lyft have made

transportation extremely convenient for consumers. The survey results show that the majority of
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the participants use Uber/Lyft and only a couple of the participants use the taxi. According to

Rogers (2015-2016):

In some cities, the result is that dispatched cabs may never arrive-full stop. Uber has
basically eradicated search costs. Rather than calling a dispatcher and waiting, or
standing on the street, users can hail a car from indoors and watch its progress toward
their location. Drivers also cannot poach one another's pre-committed fares. This is a real
boon for consumers who don't like long waits or uncertainty-which is to say everyone.
(p.82)

Based on prior experience, it was expected that the majority of Chinese international students do

not know how to drive a car but the data proved me wrong because the majority of participants

said they know how to drive. Also, the results show that Chinese international students choose to

use Uber and Lyft based on how convenient it is. Additionally, Feeney (2015) indicated that taxi

drivers’ “job consists of giving rides to anonymous strangers...It is therefore unsurprising that

taxis make such inviting targets for robberies. Uber and Lyft rides, by contrast, are notable for

two reasons: no cash ever changes hands, and passengers are not anonymous. These important

differences remove major incentives for violent assaults and furthermore ensure that any Uber or

Lyft passenger who commits a crime during a ride will be easier to apprehend." One of our

interviewees, Elena had a different opinion. She said that in State College, she likes to use Uber

because it is more convenient and taxis take longer to arrive to a location after it is called.

However, sometimes feel hesitant when it comes to using Uber because of safety reasons. The

price is also an important factor. Our interviewees, Justin and Chushi said that they would prefer

taxi because it is cheaper. Chinese international students will also choose a cost-effective way of

daily travel. During the literature review, there were not a lot of research on Chinese

international students’ consumer behavior on transportation specifically. It is important to do this

research because this shows that sometimes Chinese international students think different than
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local residents, and it is important to understand their consumer behaviors to provide a better

service.

Staying Accommodations

Nowadays, consumers take control and they value their experience that can be fulfilled

by Airbnb which provides unique experience such as interactions with others (Zervas 2017). A

variety of motives attract guests to Airbnb. Primarily, Airbnb guests are attracted to the service’s

practical advantages (for example, cost, location, and amenities) and the appeals (for example,

authenticity, novelty, and interaction) are secondary (Guttentag, 2017). In the online survey, it

has been shown that personal and social factors are both affecting consumer behaviors when

choosing Airbnb accommodations. It has been found that the most influencing factors which

encourage Chinese international students to choose and use Airbnb accommodation are cost,

location, and authenticity. Justin, one of the interviewees said he likes to use Airbnb only when

he is sharing with friends. He said he prefers Airbnb because there are hosts that know the best

local information. And another interviewee, Chushi said he likes Airbnb more than hotels

because it feels “home-yer.” Airbnb’s goal is to make customers feel like home and interact with

the community (Airbnb, 2018). Therefore, Airbnb has had such a significant impact on the

tourism and travel industry today, and overall according to the online survey, most of the

participants said that they would use Airbnb again in the future. In conclusion, not only Chinese

international students but, everyone would start to use Airbnb as tourism accommodations as

time goes on.

Food Delivery Services (add citations and stop using percentages)

Grubhub is the biggest online delivery service throughout the nation (Rani, 2017) on

other hand, Ricepo and One Menu are smaller more local platforms. The survey shows that
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Chinese International students in State College, prefer to use Ricepo and One Menu when they

are ordering food. There are several reasons behind that; First, Ricepo and One Menu are the

only partners with Asian restaurants. Asian food is the most adaptable to Chinese International

students. Secondly, on the website they have Chinese language version for customers who can

speak and need to read Chinese. Third, Ricepo has a more payment option methods, including

credit cards, Alipay and WeChat Pay. Students especially in State College have a strange time

periods when it comes to eating food because of the late hours with school work or even going

out. Ricepo and One Menu were designed to only serve the students. On the contrary, Grubhub is

for the whole community and is nationwide. Therefore, during after school and work rush hour

from 5pm-8pm, Ricepo and One Menu are able to deliver their food to the customers within a

good timeframe with good service, while Grubhub is not able to because of the overloaded

orders and lack of delivery drivers.

Makeup

A recent study found that in 2015, the beauty industry saw a $6.2 billion of its sales

occurring online, accounting for approximately 8% of the total industry sale but growing at a

faster pace than the overall industry growth (Spector, 2017). Online-shopping as a whole has

become an important part of the makeup industry. From our survey, a little of half of the people

wear makeup and all of those participants that wear makeup, prefer to shop online for makeup. It

was expected that most of the participants that do shop online have the top reason as being,

convenience. 37.5% of the participants think that online reviews are the reason why they buy

makeup online. The interaction amongst all shoppers is something that is offered only by online

shopping, as previous buyers are able to share their experience of using the product via product

reviews and rating. This is noted as one of the major driving forces for consumers to shop online,
CONSUMERS HAVE ALL THE CONTROL 19

having access to a network of customers and the ability to gaining extra information about the

product, something that is hard to for consumers to acquire through the conventional in-store

shopping (Perea et al, 2004).

As to our survey, 20.8 % people said that no human interaction was the main reason they

shop online. There is no evidence that human interaction is more of an international person’s

perspective reasoning but it could be speculated that it is a factor. A recent poll by M.Shapouri in

2016, found that the number of people who would rather reach for their smart phones for a quick

check on a product’s reputation or price comparison rather than ask the salesperson has reached

58 percent.

To conclusion, based on our data, attempt to identify the factors that influence Chinese

international student’s online shopping makeup behavior. Online beauty shopping offers certain

benefits such as convenience, product/price comparison, reviews that are unmatched by in-store

shopping, hence its ever fast growing trend. In addition, online shopping is the perfectly suitable,

quick and convenient solution for problem of beauty product selection,which is the biggest factor

influence Chinese international students. Still, online shopping makeup is comfort of do it at

home, combined with feeling of not being judged by their choice are definitely added benefits

that is offered by online beauty shopping.

With all the above listed advantages of online beauty shopping, it is also worth

mentioning some of the limitations. In person testing is one of the unique experiences that are

offered by in-store shopping (Singleton, 2017). This is something that is currently unavailable in

online shopping that just so happens to be one of the key characteristics that allow beauty retail

stores to retain the majority of regular beauty shoppers. In-store shopping also provides the

opportunity to socialize with friends and family, which women typically value more than men
CONSUMERS HAVE ALL THE CONTROL 20

do, and in the case of beauty shopping, this is definitely one of the attracting factors that

encourage women to visit beauty stores in person. Premium shoppers also favor the personalized

shopping experience that is exclusively offered by beauty stores, something that is currently not

achievable with online shopping.

Limitations and Conclusion

After conducting this research study, there were a few things that we would have done

differently. Instead of just sending out the survey online to the WeChat app, we should have tried

to get participants face-to-face around campus. If we would have done that, we could have made

a good impression on some of the potential participants from a marketing standpoint. In addition

to that, we could have had non-Penn State Chinese International students. Lastly, although our

overall topic was Consumer Behaviors, on the online survey, we only asked questions about our

specific five themes; fashion, beauty, staying accommodations, transportation, and online food

delivery. It may have been more beneficial for us to ask more general questions about consumer

behaviors on the survey that connected to all of our topics.

Overall, this research study conducted about consumer behaviors was very interesting

and eye opening. Although it did not go perfectly and what we had expected as a team, it went

smoothly and we as a group learned a lot about the topic and each other. Breaking this research

study into themes under the overall theme of consumer behaviors, made it easy to separate

specific interests within the group members. Each of us learned about new topics and we saw

how Chinese International students think when they take things into account when buying things.
CONSUMERS HAVE ALL THE CONTROL 21

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Figures
CONSUMERS HAVE ALL THE CONTROL 24

Figure 1

Figure 1 refers to the various ages that were recorded from the online survey about Consumer
Behaviors.

Figure 2

Figure 2 are the results answered from the question “Do you use your own money to buy
clothes?” under the section Fashion and Clothing from the results section. The answers are
colored coded on the right side of the pie chart from a total of 31 participants.
CONSUMERS HAVE ALL THE CONTROL 25

Figure 3

Figure 3 is from the Fashion and Clothing section as well from the Results section of this
document. This question is based on whether or not people base how they dress everyday
depending on the environment they are in.

Figure 4

Figure 4 is in the Fashion and Clothing section asking the participants if their daily lifestyle
choices affect their fashion choices.
CONSUMERS HAVE ALL THE CONTROL 26

Figure 5

Figure 5 is referring to the Staying Accommodations part of the Results section. This pie chart
are the results from the participants rating Airbnb overall on a scale from 1 to 5.

Figure 6

Figure 6 is also in the Staying Accommodation theme under the Results section. There are five
options on the vertical axis of this figure and the horizontal axis are the number of people who
booked the specific accommodation through Airbnb.
CONSUMERS HAVE ALL THE CONTROL 27

Figure 7

Figure 7 refers to Staying Accommodations. On the vertical axis there are six options the
participants chose from the online survey and horizontal axis has the number of participant for
each option.

Figure 8

Figure 8 is from the Transportation part of the Results section. The figure is broken down into
five reasons as to why participants take specific transportation. The orange and blue differ
because one is Uber/Lyft and one is taxi.
CONSUMERS HAVE ALL THE CONTROL 28

Figure 9

Figure 9 refers to the Online Food Delivery service theme under the Results section and it is
asking the 31 participants to simply answer yes or to the question above.

Figure 10

Figure 10 refers to the Makeup part of the Results section and asks the participants to answer
why they specifically buy makeup online giving them four options.
CONSUMERS HAVE ALL THE CONTROL 29

Figure 11

Figure 11 refers to the Makeup section as well and what most influences the participants to shop
for makeup in the store. The one green section was the option, “Other” in which one participants
wrote in what they said.