Under The Background Of Cross-cultural Space Consumption In Contemporary China

Consumption can be considered part and parcel of modern practice in thecontemporary metropolis——an environment given the name of "consumer society"by French sociologist Jean Baudrillard(1989) who defines a life as being dominatedby the logic of signs. He suggests that it is not so much possession of the "use value"as the enjoyment of the "sign value" that corresponds with consumers’ identity andtaste. It is this line of logic that keeps the consumption of commodities’ immaterialitymoving forward. Contemporary China, following the path of globalization, has neverseen the consumption of foreign commodities so unprecedented as today.This thesis, in investigating the dynamics of the interaction between COSTA andher consumers, attempts to discover how this English high-end coffee brand, bydeveloping her semiotic connotations and her well-designed space of consumptionsuccessfully identify the brand with the Chinese consumer. Meanwhile, it alsoaddresses how the consumers interpret the myth created by COSTA and how theirbehaviour reinforces their identification with the brand.The research methods employed in this study are semiotic analysis andqualitative interviews. The former is intended to decode the connotations of COSTA’sexhibited images and spatial representations and the latter to interpret thepsychological process of identification of consumers. The study shows that the signsand the spatial designs of COSTA appeal to consumers aspiring for amiddle-and-upper standard of consumption. They in turn deepen their understandingof the brand culture as their identifications are formed by actively decoding the signsand spontaneously engaging in altering the space to fit into their own perception. Byclosely linking their identities to the brand, Chinese consumers are provided withglobal experience of consumption in a local context. The theoretical applications ofBaudrillard are shown to fit the COSTA COFFEE case well in the Chinese context.