Research On The Change Of Chinese Consumer Behavior Since The Foundation Of China

Consumption is an important part of GDP, and the growth of consumer demand is the main driving force of economic growth. Before the foundation to the reform and opening up, China's economy basically stayed at the development stage of shortage economy and amount expanding, and the resident consumption remained with supply-constrained style on the whole. After reform and opening up, as China's economic development, economic system shifted from the traditional planned economy to socialist market economy; the economic growth mode changed from extensive form to intensive form;and the whole national economy gradually took on a systematical and steady situation under the pulling of the three wheels-investment, consumption and foreign trade. However, after entering the "Ninth Five-Year", since a lack of effective demand, especially the shortage of consumer demand, it began to become a major issue to restrict the healthy development of China's economy.China put forward the strategic planning of expanding domestic demand and promoting consumption in 1998.After that, the state had taken an expansionary fiscal policy and active monetary policy for several consecutive years.These policies played a certain role in effectively inhibit the downward trend in the economy, but the effect was not ideal. The continuous decline of the consumption rate turns into an important factor of constraining the sustainable and steady development of Chinese economy.This thesis emphasizes that the key of studying economic phenomenon lies in catching the "invisible hand" that hides behind the economic phenomenon. Consumption is a kind of activity conducted by individual or organization; it's not only a kind of economic behavior, but also a kind of social behavior; it has sociality and externality. From the perspective of consumer subject consciousness, consumer behavior is divided into rational, bounded rational and irrational;from the angle of the internal relation of consumption and national economy, consumer behavior has a big influence on economic operation, economic development, economic structure and economic quality of life. So, the study of Chinese consuming issue should take Chinese consumer behavior as its logic starting point.This thesis holds, in the later part of the twentieth century, China not only followed the way of socialism, but also went through a tremendous and profound change during the last twenty years, i.e.,the system transition and social transformation from planned economy to socialist market economy. During the transformation of economic system, the Chinese consumer behaviors will inevitably changes with the social and economic environment.Based on the basic fact that the change of Chinese consumer behavior embedded in the change of Chinese marketed-policy, this thesis reviewed the transformation of Chinese consumer behavior and stage features since the foundation of China, and summarized the situations of the changes in Chinese consumer behavior. The theory framework of the change of Chinese consumer behavior is established based on the system, structure, psychology. Through theoretical analysis and empirical analysis, we have studied the decision-making mechanism, the drive mechanism and the selection mechanism of the changes in Chinese consumer behavior, so as to lay a foundation to policy research.This paper is divided into nine chapters:Chapter one is the introduction. It mainly introduces the research background, purposes, meaning and contents.Chapter two summarizes the consumer behavior-related theories in China and abroad. By analyzing the present situation that the Chinese scholars'research on the Chinese consumer behavior, this paper points out the limitation of using the western traditional consumer behavior theory to explain the Chinese consumer behavior. The purpose is to establish the analysis frame of Chinese consumer behavior.Chapter three systematically discusses the features and special status of the changing of Chinese consumer behavior. It points out four special status of the changing of Chinese consumer behavior since the foundation of the nation:the influence factor changes from single factor to multi-factor; the speed and extent of change ranges from slow and shallow to fast and deep; the internal driving force changes from strong to weak; the period of change presents a fluctuate characteristics of long-short-long.Chapter four reveals the mechanism of the change of Chinese consumer behavior theoretically through system, structural, and psychological perspective. It brings forward three decision-making on consumer behavior that is internal decisions theory, external decisions theory, and external-internal decisions theory. Also it points out different assumptions of human nature show different decision-making characteristics of consumer behavior. Consumer demand has a dynamic evolvement concept which is the internal power of the changing of consumer behavior. In addition, the evolvement of the economic structure is external power of the changing of consumer behavior. The external power mechanism includes the interaction mechanism between the changes of the economic cycle and consumer spending, the linkage mechanism between the changes of the industrial structure and consumption structure, and the restriction mechanism between the changes of the investment structure and the consumption structure. Institution and institutional change is the root cause of the changing of Chinese consumer behavior. There are three selection modes for the realization of the changing of consumer behavior by Institution that is the natural evolving model, the government enforcing mode, the institution adapting model.It further advances two modes of the changing of consumer behavior since the foundation of the China, i.e. the mode of government enforcing and situation adapting.Chapter five mainly use the method of system analysis to explain the changing of Chinese consumer behavior. It points out that the series of institutional changes which were triggered by system reform are the fundamental reason of the special change of Chinese consumer behavior, although there are clues that the cultural change raised the reform of consuming concept and that the logic of "production determines consumption" lead to the reform of people's life style, and there also exists the factor of the change of consumer demand.Chapter six mainly researches the internal psychological mechanism and the informal institutional constraints of the change of Chinese consumer behavior from the perspective of psychology and institutional economics. It points out that during the change of Chinese consumer behavior, such informal institutional constraints as blind following, parsimony, pessimistic anticipation, inverse psychology and confidence crisis show in different stages.These factors play a negative and impeding role on consumer behavior to some extent, resulting in "weakening consumption".Chapter seven mainly discusses external power mechanism of the changing of Chinese consumer behavior based on structure. It demonstrates the empirical analysis on the correlation among cyclical fluctuations of Chinese consumer behavior since the foundation of China, the economic cycle fluctuation, the evolution of industrial structure and the evolution of investment structure. Firstly, from the foundation of China to 2005,Chinese resident consumption growth cycle and the fluctuation of the economic growth rate did not show regularity. In terms of the form of fluctuation, the frequency of consumption fluctuation was slightly higher than the economic cycle; in terms of the intensity of fluctuation, before the reform, the intensity of the consumption cycle was weaker than the economic cycle, after the reform, the intensity of the consumption cycle was stronger than the economic cycle; secondly, since the sixty years after the foundation of the new China, the trend of the growth of the investment in fixed assets was contrary to the comprehensive trend of the growth of the consumption. The fluctuation of the growth rate of the fixed assets investment was ahead of the fluctuation of the consumption cycle on the whole, and its scope of fluctuation was larger than the consumption cycle. Since the foundation of China till the reform and opening up, investment fluctuation cycle is the major driving force of the cyclical fluctuation of economy, but since the reform and opening up, China's economic fluctuation cycle was basically driven by consumption cycle; thirdly, during the 20 years after the foundation of new China, the structure of consumer demand hardly exerted any conductive effect on the industrial restructuring. Till the 1980s after China has implemented the demand-oriented industrialization strategy, the inductive effect of the consumption structure on the industrial structure had gradually enhanced. But after the 1990s, the increasingly rising consumer demand and the imbalance of investment structure further aggravated the contradiction of the supply-demand of Chinese consumer goods, resulting in the blocking of the upgrading of the consumption structure.Chapter eight mainly uses the system, structure, and psychological theory to analyze empirically the mechanism of the change of Chinese consumer behavior. Based on the current situation in the consumer behavior, this chapter predicts six trends of the changing of the mechanism of the change of Chinese consumer behavior. The six trends present four distinct features, i.e. consumer attitude shift to enjoy life, mature and stable consumer mentality, consuming target advocates personality and taste and the pursuit of comfortable and convenient mode of consumption.Chapter nine is the conclusion and viewpoint of the whole thesis. It gives attention to the features of the present Chinese consumer behavior and the macroeconomic situation, putting forward the policy recommendations to lead consumers out of the "low-consumption trap" from the following four aspects: enhancing consumer confidence, changing the mode of economic development, establishing trust relationship between the government and the consumer and advocating a new concept of consumption.This thesis, including content and analysis has following possible innovations mainly:1. It studies on the macro problem through the microscopic mechanism, and establishes the theory framework of the change of Chinese consumer behavior based on the system, structure, psychology.2.It describes the special status of the changing of Chinese consumer behavior.3.It analyzes on the dynamic evolution mechanism of consumer demand from the evolving logic humanity, external environment and economic forms.4.It summarizes two modes of the changing of consumer behavior since the foundation of the China, i.e. the mode of government enforcing and situation adapting.5.It focuses on analyzing the psychological methods of how the system change affects the change of the consumer behavior, and argues that the system change affect consumer behavior through "psychological defense". It further points out the informal institutional factors that hindered the changing of consumer behavior.6.It put forward the policy recommendations to lead consumers out of the "low-consumption trap".There are some shortcomings for this paper:1.In this paper, the accuracy of some data also needs further examination. 2.It lacks of empirical analysis on the impact of formal institutional change and informal institutional factors to the changing of consumer behavior.3.There has been relatively little research on difference showing in the changing of consumer behavior, particularly lacking of a comparative study of Chinese-foreign consumer behavior.4. The countermeasures are not researched enough, which needs for further research.