Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the processes of cross-cultural meaning-making involved in production and consumption of Japanese services in Guangzhou. It focuses on the increasing importance of bodily practice, sensory experience, and the concept of personalized service for value creation in commodity chains

Paper long abstract:

Arjun Appadurai observed that greater "spatial, cognitive and institutional distances between production, distribution and consumption" entail a proliferation of "culturally constructed stories and ideologies about commodity flows". Japanese service industry in Guangzhou (i.e., Japanese restaurants, Ginza-style bars, Japanese beauty salons) provides a particularly good opportunity to examine this notion, because even though the physical distance between the service provider and the service consumer is indeed very close, as in a sushi restaurant where the chef has to perform right in front of the patron, the baggage of disjointed perspectives each of them brings into the experience continues to stand between them. To what degree do these gaps in knowledge sometimes help the creation of value, for example, increasing the chef's sense of well-being by giving him a chance to show off and feel proud of his fish slicing skills, something that the patron may not even view as significant? Does the close setting in services help the actors shrink the knowledge gap? Are service providers better placed than the producers of goods to shape and appropriate the imaginative activity of creative consumers?

Based on the empirical data gained through participant observation and in-depth interviews with informants in Guangzhou, one of the wealthiest coastal cities in China, this paper investigates the reflexive interactions between Japanese service professionals (sushi chefs, bartenders, hairstylists, etc.) and Chinese customers, newly middle-class urban dwellers. In promoting their business, Japanese service professionals rely less on explicit marketing and more on emphasizing dedication and continuous effort to master their craft. For example, seemingly trivial, often repetitive, actions such as polishing glassware and liquor bottles by bartenders, sharpening knives, wiping and replacing utensils after each use by chefs and so on, gain a special meaning. This in turn is viewed as an expression of personalized care and affection by a new generation of freer-spending Chinese consumers, looking for a space to assert their individual taste and increasingly sophisticated consumer attitudes in a market struggling with high stakes issues related to food safety, service quality and product credentials.