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An executive summary for managers and executive readers can be found at the end of this article. Marketers recognize how consumers utilize products to define themselves. Products empower a consumer to identify with others and to construct and reinforce the self ([26] Sivadas and Machleit, 1994; [29] Wallendorf and Arnould, 1988). This research investigates cultural changes through the favorite products of a sample of urban and rural consumers from the People's Republic of China (PRC)[1] . Research on PRC consumers is a rather new phenomenon, and our knowledge is sketchy. Specifically, knowledge of PRC consumers is often limited to developed urban centers, leaving out the near one billion rural and small-town consumers. Primarily an agricultural, rural society, China is expected to be 75 percent urban within 20 years ([9] China Daily , 2004), making it important to investigate and understand the particulars of both rural and urban Chinese consumers.
Contemporary China is the fastest developing nation on earth, and after two decades of rapid economic development, large-city Chinese consumers' product choices match those from the most developed economies. In contrast, rural consumers can be found in isolated, subsistence farms with virtually no marketing support systems or villages and small towns where basic supplies and, sometimes, modern appliances are available. Except for ubiquitous television sets, purchasing and consuming possibilities for today's rural and small-town consumers are similar to those of the late 1970s or early 1980s, the time when China opened up. Inequality between rural and urban milieus now dominates all inequalities in China ([6] Bhalla et al. , 2003), a difference with the late 1950s Great Leap Forward that replaced private ownership ([24] Shen, 1985) of economic factors and most private goods with communes ([27] Spence, 1990) when marketing activities were banned. Later, the 1966 Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution narrowed "the differences between town and country, between worker and peasant, and between manual and mental labor" ([27] Spence, 1990, p. 644) resulting in urban and rural consumers becoming even, in terms of consumption and product ownership possibilities ([10] China Quarterly , 1976). After 1985, "newly affluent Chinese who were able to benefit from the economic reforms were thirsting for consumer goods" ([27] Spence, 1990, p. 623).
Thus, a second reason to consider rural consumers is...