The Visual Economy of Guochao in China’s New-Style Tea Industry: A Focused Integrative Review and Case Typology

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-777-4_18How to use a DOI?

Keywords

China-chic; Visual Economy; Cultural Branding; Brand Authenticity

Abstract

This article examines Guochao, or China-chic, as a visual economy in China’s new-style tea industry. Instead of treating Chinese-style design as a direct predictor of purchase intention, it explains how cultural signs move across packaging, stores, collaborations, platform content, and mobile ordering interfaces. Recent studies on China-Chic consumption, co-branding, new tea-product adoption, short-video marketing, Gen-Z beverage behavior, and perceived brand authenticity are synthesized to identify when visual branding becomes culturally credible and commercially actionable. The article argues that Guochao visual branding supports transaction-oriented intention only when cultural symbols are specific and coherent, authenticity is reinforced by credible sources and peer interpretation, and digital touchpoints reduce the friction between admiration and action. Its contribution is a compact typology of five visual-branding forms and an interpretation-to-action framework for localized cultural branding in platform-mediated consumer industries.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Sa Tang
AU  - Chenrui Yang
AU  - Yu Chen
AU  - Zhiyuan Wang
AU  - Yiqing Zhu
AU  - Xiayi Yan
AU  - Zhixian Cui
AU  - Qingchang Zuo
AU  - Kexin Sun
AU  - Xihuan Qiu
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/30
TI  - The Visual Economy of Guochao in China’s New-Style Tea Industry: A Focused Integrative Review and Case Typology
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 8th International Conference on Economic Management and Cultural Industry (ICEMCI 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 155
EP  - 161
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-777-4_18
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-777-4_18
ID  - Tang2026
ER  -