Comparing the inter-generational trends of pragmatism, materialism, mammonism, and snobbism among Taiwan, China, and Singapore

Economies have been developing at unimaginable speed since World War II. Local economies have crossed the boundaries of nations to become globalized markets. Globalization leads markets to be more complex. Products from any country can be diffused by diverse channels within a short time. Not only the diffusing of products has evolved, but so has the expenditure concept of consumers. Every country has its own specific culture, which when combined with modes of living, food, health, entertainment, and cognition, could deeply influence the consumer purchasing behavior. Times have changed and consumer purchasing behavior has too. This paper claims that since World War II the purchasing cognition of consumers has moved toward materialism among different generations and has significantly affected marketing systems.One of the biggest ethnic groups in the world is the Chinese, who predominately live in China, Taiwan, Singapore, and elsewhere in the world. Mainland China alone includes 1.3 billion people. Understanding the phenomena of growing China and the consumer cognitions in the Chinese cultural realm will be more and more important in the future. Based on theoretical research, this dissertation propose a model of PMMS (Pragmatism, Materialism, Mammonism, and Snobbism), which may exist in the mind-set of the Chinese, and investigate whether there are significant differences in the model among Baby Boom, X, and Y Generations in China, Taiwan, and Singapore. This model could contribute to marketing that employs different strategies in identifying the different self-cognition characteristics of consumers. Besides, this dissertation also demonstrates the MMS (materialism, mammonism, snobbism) can be a fitted hierarchical cause-effect model.Keywords. Pragmatism, materialism, mammonism, snobbism.