‘To market, to market’: uncovering Daigou touristscapes within Chinese outbound tourism

ABSTRACT

Daigou may be simply understood as purchasing on behalf of others. However, as an informal economy, Daigou trade between buyers and sellers is now a lucrative market and has emerged as a distinctive tourism segment. While Daigou occurs on the back of technological platforms that facilitate electronic commerce between customer to customer, academic literature on Daigou from a Chinese outbound tourism perspective remains scarce. Prompted by this dearth in knowledge, this research explores the emerging practices of Daigou tourists as a subset of Chinese outbound tourism through an online questionnaire survey conducted with 300 respondents from Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. Through descriptive statistics and Multiple Correspondence Analysis, the research revealed that Daigou tourism is a heterogenous market and are driven by product quality, profit margins and country of origin associations. This offers distinct theoretical and managerial contributions and elucidates a more nuanced understanding of the Daigou phenomenon as a fluid, under-regulated and micro-entrepreneurial practice in tourism.

摘要

代购, 顾名思义, 代而购之。目前, 代购以其丰厚利润已然成为一块新兴的旅游市场。代购凭借信息技术平台实现了点对点的电子商务。然而, 从中国出境旅游的角度对代购现象的学术研究仍寥寥无几。本研究通过网上问卷调查了三百名来自北京, 上海和广州的受访者, 旨在探索中国出境游客的代购行为。对数据的描述统计和多元联合分析 (Multiple Correspondence Analysis) 显示代购旅游是一个异质市场, 并取决于商品质量, 利润空间和来源国。该研究提供了可用于理论发展和管理实践的资料, 有助于深入理解代购游现象—一种有利可图并缺乏监管的微型创业实践。

KEYWORDS:

• Cross-border commerce
• shopping tourism
• china outbound tourists
• wechat
• digital payments

关键词:

• 跨境商务
• 购物旅游
• 中国出境游客
• 微信
• 数字支付

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the R&D Program of Beijing Municipal Education Commission (SM202111417007).

Notes on contributors

Xiaoyu (Nancy) Zhang

Xiaoyu (Nancy) Zhang is Associate Professor in Tourism College at Beijing Union University, Beijing, China. She has research interests in film tourism, especially within the context of the Chinese market. She lectures in the School of Tourism at Beijing Union University, and is an associate researcher at the China-New Zealand Tourism Research Unit (CNZTRU) (E-mail: [email protected]).

Aaron Tham

Aaron Tham is Program Coordinator in Tourism, Leisure and Events Management at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia. His primary research areas are located within emerging technologies and event legacies in tourism (E-mail: [email protected]).

Yulin Liu

Yulin Liu teaches research methods and applied statistics at the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. His research interests include travel behavior, tourism marketing, methodological innovation, and statistics education (E-mail: [email protected]).

Wendy Spinks

Wendy Spinks is Adjunct Lecturer at the School of Business, University of the Sunshine Coast Queensland, Australia. She researches in the areas of quantitative and qualitative social research, and behavioral economics, particularly with interests in human health and well-being (E-mail: [email protected]).

Liang Wang

Liang Wang is Lecturer in the School of Management at Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. Her research interests include online marketing and SEM applications in tourism and hospitality (E-mail: [email protected]).