Multinational Retailers and Consumers in China

Rising prosperity and a rapidly commercializing economy have transformed post-Mao China into the world's largest and most rapidly growing emerging market. Until the early 1990s, its retail sector remained largely closed to overseas retailers. Since then, this sector has gradually opened to foreign involvement, a process boosted by China joining the World Trade Organization in 2001. China now constitutes an increasingly significant market for overseas retailers. Based upon extensive...
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Rising prosperity and a rapidly commercializing economy have transformed post-Mao China into the world's largest and most rapidly growing emerging market. Until the early 1990s, its retail sector remained largely closed to overseas retailers. Since then, this sector has gradually opened to foreign involvement, a process boosted by China joining the World Trade Organization in 2001. China now constitutes an increasingly significant market for overseas retailers. Based upon extensive first hand comparative research conducted at multinational retailers from the United Kingdom and Japan, this book investigates the transfer of parent country organizational practices by these retailers to their Chinese subsidiaries. Providing insights into employment relations in multinational retail firms as well as changing labour-management systems in China, this book delineates some of their impacts on consumer culture in a developing country.