Gated Consumption, Infant Formula, and China’s Affluent Urban Consumers

• In Event: 340 - Section on Consumers and Consumption Paper Session. New Research on Consumers and Consumption

Abstract

This paper considers the specific set of consumer crises that have made infant formula and the feeding of babies a profoundly fraught endeavor in China today. We argue that affluent Chinese consumers are increasingly “opting out” of the Chinese marketplace, drawing upon their social networks and superior economic resources to purchase foreign infant formula that they believe is untainted by contact with China’s suspect markets and untrustworthy distributional channels. Based on interview and media sources, we document these consumer practices and characterize them as highly privatized forms of “gated consumption” that reflect broader patterns of Chinese middle-class lifestyles. As a strategy for dealing with food safety concerns and marketplace distrust, gated consumption is, we argue, both evidence of inequality and the fragility of the state’s promises of improved standards of living.

Authors

• Amy Hanser, University of British Columbia

• Jialin Camille Li, University of Illinois-Chicago