| Ever since China's reform and opening up to the outside world, especially after 2000, Chinese society entered a cutting-edge new consumptive period which is characterized by consumption's priority status in people's daily lives, Furthermore, after past impoverished and scarce predicament, Chinese consumers increasingly yearn for abundant material lives, in particular, the rising incomes promote the prevalence of consumerism and hedonism as well. However, the improved living hierarchy and consumptive standard need generalized symbolic consumer goods to measure for the purposes of social comparison and ostentation. For this reason, Chinese consumers begin to concentrate their purchase decisions on the highly valued commodity besides quality and function, such as hot fashion chaser and affluent 2nd generation, the above-mentioned comparison behavior is just the conspicuous consumption which is defined by Veblen. As the rapid economic development, the low-cost and good-quality purchase has turned into dust-laden history. This makes sense in that domestic consumption has raised physical commodity to concept aspect, and function attribute to symbol aspect as well for Consumption Society. The first essential in people's consumption becomes status, fortune, success, culture, personality, and the like, in such a case, symbolic meaning has a forceful effect on people's consumption and shapes their consumptive behaviors to some extent. It is so much consumption of commodities, as it is symbolic meaning of goods consumption. Consumers obtain the symbolic meaning and achieve their social value by the behavior of conspicuous consumption.Having considered all the arguments above, the present study analyzes consumers'conspicuous consumption in Chinese context in a perspective of symbolic meaning based on the theory of economics, sociology, psychology, communication, and marketing. As characteristics Conspicuous Consumption "visible" yet "not touch". By Construction of the reputation, status, taste, personality deconstruction of symbolic meaning of a combination of the individual context of China conspicuous consumption behavior, the symbolic meaning level to be systematic and in-depth interpretation, combined with the context of China to explore the different cultural values Conspicuous consumption and behavior factors behind the logic.This present study looked back on the previous researches on conspicuous consumption with deep analysis and comments firstly. Then we made several in-depth interviews with urban and rural interviewees to discovery typical cases. Furthermore, we purposed hypothesis and theoretical framework based on previous theoretical achievements and case studies. We thereupon conducted questionnaire surveys among Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Changchun, and certain rural area, performed statistical test of 1021 samples to validate propositions and hypothesis, and then illuminated the results of this empirical research. In the final analysis, this paper expanded the symbolic meaning theory so as to enrich current theory and predict the trend of conspicuous consumption.In summary, the present study draws conclusions as follows:1. Symbolic meaning combination, including reputation, status, taste and personality, promotes individual conspicuous consumption effectually. According to the results of empirical research, the Symbolic meaning (reputation, status, taste and personality) has a respectively positive effect on individual conspicuous consumption, which shows that individual is willing to pay higher price to attain individual and social construction, in the meanwhile, the above Symbolic meaning combination contains the principal connotation and extension of individual conspicuous consumption in Chinese context. The outcomes of questionnaire surveys and in-depth interviews also prove the high universality and theoretical tension of this Symbolic meaning combination.2. Individual conspicuous consumption behavior in Chinese context presents changes in varying degrees due to the collision among different cultural values. In line with this empirical research, each variable in Symbolic meaning combination will exert a discrepant effect on conspicuous consumption when the cultural values is introduced as a moderating variable, that is to say, individual conspicuous consumption present itself to differentiation in various degree. Comparing with the system features, continuity and stability of previous conspicuous consumption field, consumers will regulate the level of their conspicuous behaviors by adjusting the subject matter once some intrinsic and extrinsic culture innovations are injected, such as the changes in social customs, folkways, habits, etc. That makes sense in that individual conspicuous consumption behavior appears to be differentiation in various degrees under the collision among different cultural values.3. Traditional cultural values will restrain conspicuous consumption at social level in Chinese context. Both previous theory and this current empirical test show that, deep-rooted traditional culture affects people's consumption directly. Firstly, the explicit attributes of conspicuous consumption make individual present a showy display and break down the potential authority rank and strata attribute, which is contrary to humble and folksy philosophies of life in our traditional cultural values. Secondly, the high-price and high-expense behavioral attributes run counter to Chinese traditional values such as hardworking and thrifty, therefore under the effect of humility, individual conspicuous consumption emphasizes the security of his/her consumptive behavior, that is to say, consumers are reluctant to break potential rank authority and vested harmonious social interaction; under effect of the thrifty, individual conspicuous consumption emphasizes the copiousness of his/her consumptive behavior, in other word, consumers incline to do more with less money and save faces as well.4. Modern cultural values will promote conspicuous consumption at individual level in Chinese context. Several emerging and modern values inject fresh vigor to individual consumer in Chinese society, which makes materialism and self-fulfillment become his/her principal spiritual ballast. In highly developed consumptive environment, the quality and quantity of commodities are associated with people's living standards, at the same time, consumption is becoming the direct measurement of individual strife and success, therefore consumers'self-fulfillment is effectually achieved by consumption. But comparing with traditional conspicuous consumption characterized by showing off oneself, conspicuous consumers at individual level more willingly communicate refined taste and highlight personality with others;Furthermore, they improve the culture of their consumption by going after high grade and advance their consumptive variation by perusing individuality.The following point of innovation comes through in the present study:1. This study constructs symbol meaning combination with high generalization to deconstruct individual conspicuous consumption in Chinese context. In other word, this paper concisely depicts the ultimate aim of individual conspicuous consumption by constructing symbol meaning combination including reputation, status, taste and personality, which sums up the current intricate conspicuous consumption to the above symbol meaning combination and makes conspicuous consumption theory more concise and operational.2. This study deeply depicts the process of individual conspicuous consumption behavior by seeking and display discrepancy. Comparing to the process of Veblen's conspicuous consumption featured by discriminate comparison and money contest, this present study profoundly portrays the whole process of individual conspicuous consumption by seeking and display discrepancy to show consumer's individual trade-off process and behavioral logic, which makes individual conspicuous consumption more objective and precise in the perspective of marketing.3. This study proposes ordered and disordered symbol meaning explanation to evade the negative effect of conspicuous consumption. Ever since conspicuous consumption theory comes to the world, waste, titled with honor principle, appears to be the major negative effect, so far as to the synonym for conspicuous consumption. However, this present study proposes ordered and disorder criterion on the symbol meaning of conspicuous consumption based on individual value and social comparison associated with current economic context and consumptive environment in the view of social development and mainstream culture, which breaks people's vague cognition on conspicuous consumption in both academia and real life, and provides Important theoretical criterion for coming research on conspicuous consumption and marketing strategy making.4. This study puts forward new consumptive ideas: self-fulfillment consumption. Self-fulfillment consumption expands conspicuous consumption on the base of individual conspicuous behavior. This paper investigates the occurrence mechanism of conspicuous consumption in terms of personal strife and growth cycle by qualitative study .We find that self-fulfillment is the core promotional element of conspicuous consumption, and its final aim is to achieve the maximum of individual value, that is to say, self-fulfillment consumption is a process in which consumers fully cognizes their innate skill, payment capacity and living standard by constantly raising and improve themselves to reach the consumptive behavioral of value construction and personal ideal achievement. Self-fulfillment consumption refers to generalized consumptive behavior which offers important theoretical support to deeply explain the influence factor of current consumers'behaviors. |
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