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Sig.<0.001), education (F=6.009, Sig.<0.001) and
monthly household income (F=4.972, Sig.=0.007
<0.01) produce significant influence on their choice
on automobile exhibition. The five characteristics
are ranked in descending order of importance as
follows: occupation (26.4%), education (22.8%),
living city (22.8%), gender (18.7%), and monthly
household income (6.8%). Age has not significant
impact on dependent variable automobile exhibition.
4 SUMMARY AND
CONCLUSIONS
The study focuses on the media choice of Chinese
consumers in obtaining purchasing information
about miniature automobile and on the influence of
their demographic characteristics on the media
choice. The results show that Chinese consumers
mainly choose newspaper, TV, and automobile
exhibitions to obtain purchasing information about
miniature automobile. Chinese consumers appear not
to prefer magazine to gain advertising information
about miniature automobile.
The study finds that the demographic
characteristics of Chinese consumers produce a
significant impact at the 0.01 level on whether
consumers select newspaper, magazine, TV,
Internet, or automobile exhibition as a medium of
obtaining purchasing information. Of all six
characteristics variable, living city, occupation and
education are the three most important
characteristics which affect the media choice.
Gender has not significant influence on almost all
media choice of consumers.
The results provide substantial implications for
miniature automobile manufacturers which face
advertisement decision. If an automaker intends to
select a medium from various media for advertising,
newspaper or TV should first be considered. Another
implication derivable from this study is that
manufacturers should conduct a classification on
consumers according to their living city, occupation
or education characteristics. Manufacturers should
integrate several media to publish advertising
information suitable for the consumer categories. For
example, if they consider to use newspaper, TV or
Internet for advertising, automakers should chiefly
focus on the appeals of consumers living in the city
of middling size, or individual-enterprise or
partnership-enterprise employer doing pioneering
work or consumers with a low education level in
advertising design of Chinese miniature automobile.
This study is somewhat limited in the sense that
the sample is confined to consumers entering the
shop of dealer and having intention to purchase
miniature automobile, therefore, our results are only
a first step toward understanding Chinese miniature
automobile consumers. A more comprehensive
survey that focuses on all consumers of automobile
in China should be conducted in the future. If so, a
more representative sample could be obtained. By
the new sample, a contrast could be done on the
media choice between consumers of miniature
automobile and consumers of other automobile
categories.
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