Heritage with a High Price Tag: The Rise of China's Luxury Automotive Industry
Date
2018-03-28
Author
Advisors
Hong, Guo-Juin
Ginsburg, Shai
Ching, Leo
Repository Usage Stats
635
views
views
4,869
downloads
downloads
Abstract
This thesis seeks to answer the question, “Which attributes in China’s market conditions
during the past 40 years have led to the creation of the largest automotive industry
in the world?” The first chapter provides a historical background and establishes
the current context of the automotive industry in China through two strategy perspectives.
Michael Porter’s “Five-Forces-Model” and “Clusters and the New Economics of Competition”
provide a framework to evaluate the Chinese automotive industry’s development and
global competitiveness. The second chapter argues how the industry’s highly competitive
nature has transformed the role of luxury among Chinese automotive consumers. The
chapter tackles three specific issues: what is luxury, who buys luxury and evolving
trends in luxury. In conclusion, this thesis seeks to characterize the future of luxury
in the Chinese automotive industry as “Cars with Chinese characteristics.” One way
to understand “Cars with Chinese Characteristics” is through the lens of the Chinese
philosophy, yin-yang, where yin and yang are complementary forces that interact to
form a dynamic system in which the whole is greater than the assembled parts. Through
the creation of paradoxes, we learn that heritage is the bridge between the past and
the future. The future of luxury in the Chinese automotive industry lies within the
resilient and innovative brands that are able to manifest this heritage with a high
price tag.
Type
Honors thesisDepartment
Asian and Middle Eastern StudiesPermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/16705Citation
Smith, Sydney (2018). Heritage with a High Price Tag: The Rise of China's Luxury Automotive Industry. Honors thesis, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/16705.Collections
More Info
Show full item record
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Rights for Collection: Undergraduate Honors Theses and Student papers
Works are deposited here by their authors, and represent their research and opinions, not that of Duke University. Some materials and descriptions may include offensive content. More info