Consuming Places and Communicating Mobility Through Purchasing

This chapter describes how daigou shoppers create meaning from the act of lining up at a shopping mall and purchasing local commodities, illustrating personal shopping as physically mobile, laborious, and consumption-involved service labor. I suggest that the shopping practices create a sense of professionalism among some participants at a given time and place. I show that through the process of buying assigned commodities, many shoppers demonstrate that they must be assiduous, competent, and mobile in place. This chapter also explains the social construction of shopping mobilities anchored by gendered meaning and a family-based organization of shopping trips. I present several gender-biased narratives that differentiate personal interests from the meaning of shopping by daigou.