Consumer Culture in China and the Middle Class Essay

Consumerism leads to self-gratification and the loss of life’s important values such as friendship, love and religion; this is an ever-growing issue that manipulates and deceives society and has done so since the beginning of the technological age.

The amount of consumerism that happens every day of our life is something people in society may never think of. Consumerism is everywhere in our societies. .Consumer culture is the value of where our thoughts are on the buying and selling of goods or services and how we use the resources that we consume. In the article “Devil Takes Visa” on consumer culture, Clapp would say everything people do is becoming consumeristic, from going to church or going to school we are consumers. Consumer culture is all around and all through us whether we believe it or not we are constantly being consumers of many products and services. Americans are constantly consuming and it’s something I wouldn’t agree more on. I’ve never really stopped and thought about

China viewed itself as an autarkic agricultural economic system and whilst Britain purchased large amounts of Chinese tea, silk and porcelain the Chinese held the European manufactured products at very little value. This monopolistic system of

Often, these store owners provided rice, noodles, and vegetables not available in Euro-American stores and supplemented the workers’ diet with vegetables grown by local Chinese truck gardeners and meat from pigs, ducks, and chickens raised by Chinese farmers (Chan 1991). While such an association between early store owners and the Chinese laborers can hardly be called a community, their relationship filled a vital social and economic niche that was often lacking for most early non-white immigrants.

The rise of nationalism in the late 1700s through the early 1800s was frowned upon by the Chinese. It brought democracy, opium trade which eventually led to the opium wars, and the fight over who territories in Shanghai. The British were looking to trade for silver. They offered China lots of silver, for their tea. Britain had essentially scammed the Chinese and instead of paying them the silver they were promised, they payed them with large quantities of opium from the British-Owned India. China didn’t like this, but many of China’s citizens became addicted to the drug of opium. The Chinese were now furious and filled with hate towards western culture. This led to a rise of nationalism within China for its citizens to rebel against this foreign

Since the beginning of time, ethics and standards have been passed down from generation to generation. China has been a country that has always implemented strategies to contain and protect this energy into a systematic process. In doing so, their Chinese heritage was protected and passed along, creating a strong culture. We know China as having pretty colors and dancing dragons, and visit these cultural microcosms in their restaurants built in the United States. We crack open our cookie revealing our fortunes, disregarding the fundamental background of the restaurant we sit in. We may appreciate the taste and service of the restaurant, but don’t think about the dish’s symbolic nature.

The attitudes of Consumer are one of the primary promoters of trends in food consumption (Fabinyi and Liu 2014: 220). Based on the readings, I have noticed that the traditional cultural ideology has great impacts on the consumer attitudes. Traditionally, shark fins are the symbol of wealth and power, which has let them become the luxury and vital commodities in China today. As the rapid development in the Chinese economy, a much wider social classes have adequate income to afford the expensive shark fin soup, which fueled an expansion of the shark fin

As a country, Americans love to shop. Whether in malls, grocery stores, on the Internet, or elsewhere, the culture of buying is deeply ingrained in American culture. Fueled largely by advertising and the current credit system, America’s consumer culture is depleting our planet’s finite natural resources and polluting our environment. Consumerism has instilled in Americans an artificial, ongoing, and insatiable desire for mass-produced and marketed products, and the money with which to buy them, with little regard to their actual usefulness or necessity. This constant desire to acquire more possessions is poisoning the planet, as it can never be sated and thus results in the never-ending exploitation of the Earth’s natural resources, and

Globalization is far reaching in this day and age. Globalization is the worldwide flow of goods, services, money, people, information, and culture. It leads to a greater interdependence and mutual awareness among the people of the world (Tischler, 2011, 2007, p. 430). One non-Western culture that has been impacted by globalization is China. An example of the impact of globalization on China is their economy. Since joining the World Trade Organization, China has transformed from a culture that relied on economic self-sufficiency and shunned the thought of globalization to an economy that is progressively more open to trade and foreign investment.

Consumerism is damaging to our society, in our North American society consumerism is often portrayed to be a negative aspect of people’s lives. However, one can also argue positive effects that result from consumerism, or emphasize on the negative effects of consumerism and how it can be a constraining force in one’s own life. Consumerism is an idea of an economic policy that the market is shaped by the choice of the consumer and continues to emerge to shape the world’s mass markets. Some of the negative effects of consumerism that many critics may argue and that will be further emphasized on are the overexploitation of consumerism which has lead to economic poverty, and increase

The world is the influenced by what they see and want to be there, where the low class wants to be like the middle class and the middle class trying to look like the upper class. Today celebrities and people in upper class have influenced our sense of importance and needs, when it comes to the aspect of picking commodities. Thus, many have resulted to high and unnecessary expending in order to imitate a particular social icon. It can be ascertained that almost all average American adult being in debt might be as a result of overspending their need limit. This excessive and unnecessary spending as a result to boost our economic status has led to some drastic tragic events. A Chinese man, Tao Hsiao, 38, on the 9th of December 2013, jumped to his death in a shopping mall at China because the girlfriend would not stop shopping after several hours of shopping ( The Washington Times). “He told her she already had enough shoes, more shoes that she

Understanding consumer buying behavior entails marketing, relationships, and consumer behavior. Consumer behavior comprises all the consumer decisions and activities connected with the choosing, buying, using and disposing of goods and services. Marketers must pay very close attention to consumer behavior that occurs before the purchase and after the particular product has been used. Studying consumer habits is one of the steps in marketing search and analysis. In addition to other basic principles of consumer buying habits, marketers also need to study the decision and actions of real people. Until recent history the study of consumer behavior was focused on generalized consumer decisions. With

China is becoming more westernised, particularly the ‘cosmopolitan’ city of Shanghai, where demand for Western products is increasing rapidly as disposable income rises in line with China’s strong economic growth. Michel’s wanted to establish a foothold in the market at an early stage to demonstrate a long-term commitment, which has been identified as essential to compete successfully in the Shanghai market (per Tim Harcourt, Austrade Chief Economist).

Also the consumer behavior in china was very different than in Canada. In china the saving rates per family were much higher than in Canada and Usa. Families were accustomed to save a considerable amount of money for other future issues rather than in electronic products as in Canada and Usa, which are higher consumer societies.

In terms of social culture, for one thing, the China consumers are attracted by middle- and high-end products and somehow more attracted by French luxury goods, and they believe that the higher the price, the better the quality (Yuval, Vinay and Cathy, 2011, para7) (Exhibit 1). For another thing, the traditional virtue of thrift is rooted in the mindset of the Chinese, with which some of the rich in China indicate that they would not spend a large sum of money to get a product.