Developing advertising for the new Chinese consumer markets

Byline: Jennifer A. Pope, James A. Pope Advertising has always played an important role when a society has an open market. China opened its market in 1979 and changed the official stance toward advertising from 'an essential corrupter of capitalism' to an accepted part of the new socialist doctrine (Pollay & Tze, 1990). Since that time, the Chinese market has developed from a strictly state controlled one to a market that is relatively open. There has already been a significant amount of research done on the first decade of advertising in the People's Republic of China. This paper proposes to examine the development in consumer advertising in China during the second decade. The development of distinct market segments as well as the privatisation of many of the state-controlled enterprises should have a significant impact on the advertisements in the PRC in the late 1980s and 1990s.